Annual Meeting

Matthew B. Weinger To Present Arnold M. Small Lecture in Safety By Michael J. Kalsher, Technical Program Committee Guest Lectures Chair

The 23rd Annual Arnold M. Small Lecture in Safety will be presented by Matthew B. Weinger, MD, on Wednesday, September 29, from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m. In his talk, "If Not by You, Then Who? Human Factors Contributions to Perioperative Patient Safety," Weinger will discuss the issues that affect the safety of patients undergoing surgical procedures, with an emphasis on how a lack of attention to human factors/ergonomics contributes to unsafe perioperative care, emphasizing the importance of greater involvement of HF/E practitioners in the health care domain. Weinger will argue that the active participation of HF/E professionals in the patient safety movement will have direct positive effects on our health care system.

     Weinger holds the Norman Ty Smith Chair in Patient Safety and Medical Simulation and is a professor of anesthesiology, biomedical informatics, and medical education at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He also serves as vice chair for Academic Affairs in the Department of Anesthesiology. For the Medical Center, he is director of the Vanderbilt Center for Perioperative Research in Quality and director of the Simulation Technologies Program of the Center for Experiential Learning and Assessment. Weinger has been a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) physician for more than 20 years and currently serves as senior staff physician at the Geriatric Education Research and Clinical Care (GRECC) Center at the Middle Tennessee VA Healthcare System.

     Weinger has been teaching and conducting research in anesthesia patient safety, human factors engineering, and clinical decision making for more than two decades. He received the James S. Todd Memorial Award for Patient Safety Research from the National Patient Safety Foundation in 1998. He is associate editor for health and health systems for Human Factors and is on the editorial board of Simulation in Healthcare. He is cochair of the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) Human Factors Committee, which is responsible for developing American National Standards for all medical device user interfaces. He also serves as an adviser for the Food and Drug Administration and for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

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