Our Goal
To help teams have conversations after clinical events.
About our team
We are front line clinicians working in emergency departments in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. We are passionate about debriefing clinical events and feel that debriefing is an important part of patient care as well as a way to help build reflective and supportive inter professional clinical teams.
About the INFO process
INFO Debriefing defined:
Facilitated inter-professional team reflection after important pre-determined clinical events that focuses on improving the system’s and the team ‘s performance.
INFO Debriefing is
I – Immediate
N – not for personal assessment
F – fast, facilitated, feedback
O – opportunity for the team to ask questions and clarify events
It is a voluntary debriefing process that allows charge nurses to facilitate inter-professional team debriefings of pre-determined clinical events 24/7 after completing training, in the form of a 2 hour workshop and using the INFO form as a cognitive aid.
The principles of INFO Debriefing include:
- Having clinical event debriefing champions.
- Seeking consultation and investment from the primary groups involved e.g. nurses, physicians before implementing the process.
- Training for facilitators.
- Debriefing pre-determined events so teams are encouraged to talk about cases that went well and not just cases where care could be improved.
- Pre-briefing for safety.
- Following up on debriefings.
2016 to present:
First piloted in 2016 in the Emergency Dept of the Rockyview General Hospital in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, the INFO Debriefing process has now been implemented in all 4 of the adult ED’s in Calgary, the Alberta Children’s Hospital and the Airdrie Urgent Care. These voluntary debriefings are taking place between 1-10 times per month depending on the site. At the Foothills Hospital, Calgary’s level one trauma facility, the debriefings currently take place approximately two to three times a week.
Acknowledgements
Feedback and improving INFO Debriefing is important to us and we would particularly like to acknowledge and thank the following groups in the development of the INFO process:
Dr. Adam Cheng, Dr. Vince Grant, Dr. Aaron Johnston, Dr. Gavin Burgess, Dr.Gord McNeil and Dr. Grant Innes for their contributions to INFO.
The Calgary emergency room charge nurse group who are promoting reflection and providing support for staff in the ED through the facilitation of INFO debriefings.
All the dedicated Calgary inter-professional emergency room staff whose commitment to patients and improving their care includes regularly taking part in INFO debriefings.
Want to know more about our debriefing tool?
The INFO Debriefing Team
Stuart Rose
Stuart is an adult emergency medicine doc who is passionate about clinical event debriefing. Realizing that he was not debriefing enough of his own cases, Stuart started to look at ways to make it easier to debrief every clinical case. He is committed to improving patient care through debriefing and learning from real cases.
Leanne Norrena
Leanne is an Emergency nurse educator with over 27 years of experience in the ED. She has become a champion for clinical event debriefing in her work area. Leanne has always felt that professionals learn by reflecting on their practice but often this was done as an individual, and the key learnings often not constructively shared. Clinical debriefing provides the opportunity for interdisciplinary reflection-on-action to improve patient care.
Laurie Leckie
Laurie Leckie is an adult emergency medicine Registered Nurse and Clinical Nurse Educator with a passion for experiential learning through simulation and debriefing. Laurie feels that taking the time for clinical event debriefing creates opportunities for the team to communicate and learn from each other.
Questions or concerns?
Ask us anything or book a consultation.