Diffusion of responsibility

Increased risk taking Individuals tend to take greater risks when they operate within a group rather than alone. Various explanations have been suggested, namely the illusion that the system they control is invulnerable, the diffusion of responsibility for any potential problems, the presence of persuasive persons who may take risky positions and the increased familiarization of the problem through discussions. 

It is hoped that these changes have been consistent and wise despite the diffusion of responsibility for the production of a book of this size. 

The study of patient safety is the study of complexity. The study of complexity invites us to understand key concepts that can be applied to patient safety. Basic concepts from the fleld of patient safety are sharp and blunt end active and latent failure the Swiss Cheese Model of Accident Causation slips, lapses, and mistakes and hindsight bias and the fundamental attribution error. Key concepts from organizational analysis, such as normalization of deviance, diffusion of responsibility, tightly coupled work processes, and sensemaking, introduce practical lessons from high-reliability organizations. Application of specific lessons to health care are explored in Chapter Five. 

There are also situations when people abdicate responsibility to the tool even if they do not trust it. For example, just the fact that the operator knows that computer support is available could in itself lead to complacency (links from node 14, Availability of the computer tool per se, to node 10), in a process equivalent to what some psychologists term social loafing when people work with other people, diffusion of responsibility often takes place [43, 44], Importantly, specific situations with high degrees of uncertainty (node 21), especially when other more reliable sources of information are missing (node 23), may make operators vulnerable and cause them to rely on computer support more than they would normally do, even if they do not trust its reliability. We found evidence for this in our study of CAD use with difficult-to-detect cancers. 

Diffusion of responsibility. Similar to our litter example, a key contributor to the bystander effect is a presumption that someone else should assume the responsibility. It is likely, for example, many observers of the Kitty Genovese rape and murder assumed that... 

Deindividuation. Often diffusion of responsibility is accompanied by deindividuation (Postmes and Spears, 1998)—people lose their sense of self-awareness and individuality within the team context. As with group polarization, this can be positive or negative, depending on the values and principles of the group. When team members compromise to achieve goals consistent with the organization s purpose and mission statement, the effects of deindividuation are likely to be beneficial. On the other hand, deindividuation can lead to abandoning fundamental individual constraints and to less careful or less safe decisions and behaviors. 

Several factors affect the bandshapes observed ia drifts of bulk materials, and hence the magnitude of the diffuse reflectance response. Particle size is extremely important, siace as particle size decreases, spectral bandwidths generally decrease. Therefore, it is desirable to uniformly grind the samples to particle sizes of <50 fim. Sample homogeneity is also important as is the need for dilute concentrations ia the aoaabsorbiag matrix. 

R = / -C H ), in low doses, exhibits the former behavior and is used primarily as an extradural agent in obstetrics. The lowest effective extradural concentration of etidocaine (21, X = CH, R = R = 2H, R = / -C H ), however, shows both adequate sensory and profound motor blockade so that it is useful in surgical situations where maximum neuromuscular blockade is necessary. In an isolated nerve preparation, bupivacaine blocks unmyelinated C fibers which are mainly responsible for pain perception at a much greater extent than the myelinated A fibers which carry motor impulses. It is postulated that absorption of bupivacaine by the vasculature at the site of injection, combined with the slow diffusion of this agent, results in an insufficient amount of the drug penetrating the large A fibers to cause motor conduction blockade. Clinically, motor block can be observed in some procedures. 

Skin. The skin s unique molecular transport and barrier properties pose a challenge for transdermal dmg dehvery. Diffusion of dmgs through the stratum corneum, the outer layer primarily responsible for the skin s limited permeabUity, varies by dmg, by skin site, and among individuals. Until recently, virtuaUy aU dmgs appHed to skin were topical treatments. 

Wind speed has velocity components in all directions so that there are vertical motions as well as horizontal ones. These random motions of widely different scales and periods are essentially responsible for the movement and diffusion of pollutants about the mean downwind path. These motions can be considered atmospheric turbulence. If the scale of a turbulent motion (i.e., the size of an eddy) is larger than the size of the pollutant plume in its vicinity, the eddy will move that portion of the plume. If an eddy is smaller than the plume, its effect will be to difhise or spread out the plume. This diffusion caused by eddy motion is widely variable in the atmosphere, blit even when the effect of this diffusion is least, it is in the vicinity of three orders of magnitude greater than diffusion by molecular action alone. 

Fortunately the oxidation of many metals takes place by the diffusion of the metal cation . This flux is outwards through the oxide layer, and the work of adhesion" enables the loss of metal to be compensated for by a drift of the oxide towards the metal (Fig. 1.81). Thus the stresses set up in the maintenance of oxide/metal contact are compressive and, as such, can be more readily withstood by most oxides. Nevertheless, it is these general movements of the oxide scale which are ultimately responsible for discontinuities in the majority of cases and it is appropriate to discuss transport-induced flows before proceeding any further. 

Considering natural stratospheric ozone pro-duction/destruction as a balanced cycle, the NO.v reaction sequence is responsible for approximately half of the loss in the upper stratosphere, but much less in the lower stratosphere (Wennberg et al, 1994). Since this is a natural steady-state process, this is not the same as a long term O3 loss. The principal source of NO to the stratosphere is the slow upward diffusion of tropospheric N2O, and its subsequent reaction with O atoms, or photolysis (McElroy et ai, 1976). 

---