Liberating Structures
Positive Deviance Found to Help Fight Drug-Resistant Infections
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CDC Analysis Finds a Unique Social and Behavior Intervention called Positive Deviance Helps Reduce MRSA Rates Up To 62% in Study Hospitals.
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PD MRSA Story on CBS News
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CBS news reports how healthcare workers at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia collaborated to prevent transmission of MRSA.
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Thursday Complexity Post - Pigs, People and MRSA
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When a family physician in a small town in Indiana started seeing scores of patients with MRSA infections, he began to wonder whether nearby hog farms were incubating and spreading the disease.
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Hospital in Colombia fights hospital-acquired infections with Positive Deviance
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The El Tunal Hospital Epidemiological Newsletter, now available in English, tells the story.
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NY Times Year in Ideas 2008 Cites Positive Deviance, Jerry and Monique Sternin and Plexus
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The Sternins, pioneers of Positive Deviance, and the Plexus Institute initiative using PD to fight MRSA in hospitals, is featured in The York Times Magazine year in ideas issue.
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Jerry Sternin, Innovator and Positive Deviance Pioneer, Died December 11
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Jerry Sternin "evoked our better angels."
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Interested in Culture Change? Exciting New Opportunities Exist
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Plexus Institute Seeks Consultants Experienced in Positive Deviance and other self-organizing processes for work in healthcare and educational settings.
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More We Than Me-How the Fight Against MRSA Led to a New Way of Collaborating at Albert Einstein Medical Center
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Hundreds of people at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia have joined SMASH, the organization-wide effort to fight Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA). Using Positive Deviance, an innovative social change process, a broad cross section of employees have worked together to forge new solutions, new relationships and some very encouraging results in declining infection rates. .
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JAMA Reports More Deadly MRSA Infections: Prevention Research Shows Promising Results
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The October 17, 2007 issue of JAMA includes a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that shows US rates of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections in healthcare settings are much higher then previously estimated. According to the article, almost 19,000 deaths are associated with invasive MRSA infections.
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Thursday Complexity Post - A Pox on Parties?
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Have you ever been to a chickenpox party? Some adults think deliberately exposing young children to common childhood diseases helps build stronger immune systems and is safer than giving them vaccines.
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"Do What You Can, With What You Have, Where You Are" - A Quest to Eliminate MRSA
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This story is about the use of Positive Deviance played in efforts by the staff the VA hospital in Pittsburgh to eliminate MRSA transmissions. MRSA is a virulent pathogen that cannot be killed by most commonly used antibiotics. Many authorities recognize tht the fight against MRSA is more of a behavioral and cultural challenge than it is a technical and medical problem.
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Thursday Complexity Post - Gowns, Gloves and Culture Change
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The VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System (VAPHS) has reduced hospital infections and saved money in the process, a New York Times story reports today.
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When the Task is Accomplished, Can We Say We Did It Ourselves? A Quest to Eliminate MRSA at the Veterans Administrations' Hospitals in Pittsburgh
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This story is about the quest at the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System (VAPHS) to eliminate the transmission of deadly healthcare associated infections, specifically Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus or MRSA. Using the social and behavioral change process Positive Deviance, the facility was able to engage the innovativeness and energy of hundreds of hospital staff members to uncover and create practices to prevent transmission of MRSA and to spread these practices to their colleagues.
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Positive Deviance, Culture Change & Success Against MRSA
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VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System (VAPHS) is making notable progress in reducing the transmission of deadly healthcare associated infections, specifically Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus or MRSA. Using the social and behavioral change process Positive Deviance, the facility has engaged the innovativeness and energy of hundreds of hospital staff members and patients to uncover and create practices to prevent transmission of MRSA and to spread these practices to their colleagues.
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Thursday Complexity Post - Brain Architecture Supports Subjective Experience
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How does the infinitely complex system of interacting networks with 100 billion neurons and 60 trillion synapses in the human brain allow us to think, feel, remember and develop social emotions and moral perspectives?
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emerging, Winter, 2006 Edition - The MRSA Issue
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Every year, two million patients acquire infections while being treated in US hospitals, and a growing number of the infection-causing microbes are resistant to antibiotics. In this special issue read about MRSA, the cause of 126,000 hospitalizations and thousands of deaths every year, and what a pioneering group of hospitals is doing, using the social change process Positive Deviance, to prevent the spread of MRSA.
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Thursday Complexity Post - Avoid Infectious Fashion
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Decorated designer scrubs maybe in vogue among health care fashionistas, but infection control experts say no hospital garb should be worn outside of work.
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Thursday Complexity Post - Positive Deviance Aids Battle Against Microbes
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Jerry Sternin explained the concept of Positive Deviance to audiences at the Said Business School in Oxford, England, recently, and his message may have had special resonance with people who worry about burgeoning infections rates in British hospitals.
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Plexus Institute, with support of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant, is working to fight deadly antibiotic resistant infections in healthcare facilities
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Plexus Institute has received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to support a new initiative to save lives and protect patients by preventing Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) infections in healthcare facilities.
Hospital-associated infections have been a problem in the United States for over 30 years. According to the CDC, in hospitals alone, hospital-associated infections account for an estimated 2 million infections, 90,000 deaths and $4.5 billion in excess healthcare costs annually. Many of those infections are resistant to antibiotics; MRSA is the most common cause of these infections. Plexus now a nationwide network of partner hospitals working on an initiative to use positive deviance, a behavioral change process, to halt the spread of MRSA infections.
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Thursday Complexity Post - Positive Deviants
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How do you bridge the gap between what is and what could be? Jerry Sternin, who pioneered social applications of Positive Deviance, describes some creative pathways to that bridge in "Your Company's Secret Change Agent," a Harvard Busiess Review article he wrote with consultant and author Richard Tanner Pascale. Are some people in the organization doing things differently and better? Learn from them. When managers try to impose change designed by outside experts, they are apt to face resistance and rejection. When indigenous successes of "positive deviants" are brought into the mainstream, helpful changes are enthusiastically embraced.
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emerging, August, September, October 2004 Edition
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This issue of emerging explores ipositive deviance, a new approach to social and behavioral change pioneered by Jerry and Monique Sternin. The process was created by the Sternins in their work in developing countries on such intractable issues as childhood malnutrtion in Vietnam, neonatal mortablity in the mountainous regions of Pakistan, and female genital cutting in Egypt. The issue also includes reviews of two books, Weaving Complexity and Business and The Wisdom of Crowds.
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Liberating Structures
Liberating Structures [LS] are twenty-five (and growing) easy-to-learn, adaptable methods that make it quick and simple for groups of people of any size to radically change how they interact and work together, and thus how they address issues, solve problems and develop opportunities. These methods are easy to learn, spread quickly peer-to-peer, and require minimal coaching. Liberating Structures have received the same positive response in a wide range of cultural environments in Latin America, Europe and the US. Some of the methods will be very familiar to many practitioners - such as Open Space and Appreciative Interviews. Others, like Positive Deviance and TRIZ, may be new to you. View a Plexus Institute webinar by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless hosted on ULiveandLearn.
