MacroErgonomics Safety and Health Laboratory

Ben-Tzion (Bentzi) Karsh

Department of Industrial Engineering
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Room 3218 Mechanical Engineering Building
1513 University Avenue
Madison, WI 53706 USA

608-262-3002
608-262-8454 (fax)

email: bkarsh@engr.wisc.edu
URL: http://www.engr.wisc.edu/ie/faculty/karsh_ben-tzion.html

Ben-Tzion (Bentzi) Karsh, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where his specialty is human factors engineering. He has secondary appointments in the departments of Family Medicine, Population Health, and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin and the Department of Health Administration at Virginia Commonwealth University. His research, which has been funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, United Kingdom Department of Health, Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, and the US National Library of Medicine, focuses on using human factors engineering methods to study and improve pediatric inpatient and elderly primary care patient safety. His studies focus on understanding the complex interactions among clinicians, the artifacts they use, and the contexts in which they work.

Dr. Karsh has authored or co-authored over 100 journal articles, conference papers and book chapters. His most recent publications focus on interruptions in healthcare, violations of medication safety protocols, health information technology design and implementation, nursing mental workload, and the design of consumer health informatics. He has served as an expert panelist on several invited panels and workshops sponsored by AHRQ on topics related to consumer and clinician decision support. He is a past national Chair of the Health Care Technical Group of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, serves as an ad hoc study section member for AHRQ, and is a peer-reviewer for journals such as the British Medical Journal, Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Safety, Quality and Safety in Healthcare, JAMIA, Annals of Emergency Medicine, Annals of Family Medicine, Behaviour and Information Technology, Applied Ergonomics and Human Factors. Dr. Karsh has co-directed a professional short course for the last six years that has trained nearly 200 clinicians, health administrators, and patient safety leaders in the application of human factors engineering methods and tools for patient safety.

Education
Courses/Teaching
Research
Publications
Invited Lectures
Professional Society Activities
Honors, Awards and Fellowships of my Students

Education

1999 Ph.D. Industrial Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
1996 M.S. Industrial Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
1993 B.S. Psychology (with honors), University of Wisconsin-Madison

Courses/Teaching

*For more information, please see the Courses page.

UW-Madison Industrial and Systems Engineering Courses

• ISyE 556: Occupational Safety and Health Engineering

• ISyE 652: Sociotechnical Systems

• ISyE 703: Quality of Health Care

UW-Madison Industrial and Systems Engineering Graduate Special Topics Courses

• ISyE 854: Violation and workaround behavior

• ISyE 854: Theories of Safety

• ISyE 859: Theories of Technology Implementation Strategies

• ISyE 859: Multilevel ergonomics

• ISyE 859: Patient Safety

• ISyE 961: Everything you wanted to know about becoming an assistant professor but were afraid to ask or didn't know.

UW-Madison Courses for which I regularly Guest Lecture

• Pharmacy 728: Medication Use Safety in Health Systems

• Medicine 918: Health Informatics

• Medical Physics 559: Patient Safety Risk Assessment

Additional Teaching

For the last 4 years I've served as an instructor for the Virginia Commonwealth University Patient Safety Fellowship Program. My role is to teach the 3-week online module Human Factors Engineering for Patient Safety and mentor 1-3 Fellows through a patient safety project.

I've also been in instructor in the UW-Madison Systems Engineering Initiative in Patient Safety Professional Short Course Human Factors Engineering and Patient Safety. This 1-week short course is offered every summer to healthcare researchers, practitioners, and managers as a way to get in depth training on how to apply human factors engineering concepts, tools and methods to identify, analyze and solve patient safety problems.

Invited Lectures

1. Systems Engineering and Patient Safety for Radiation Therapy, invited lecture for the Quality Assurance of Radiation Therapy and the Challenges of Advanced Technologies Conference, Dallas , TX , February 22, 2007.
2. Medication safety in pediatric hospitals, invited lecture for the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion University , Haifa , Israel , January 11, 2007.
3. Using Barcode Technology To Improve Medication Safety: Opportunities and Pitfalls , presented at the American Medical Informatics Society Annual Meeting, Washington DC , November 11-15, 2006.
4. CPOE and Bar Coding and Smart IV Pumps, Oh My! Promises and Pitfalls of Patient Safety Information Technology, Keynote for the Dane County Medical Society Annual Meeting, Madison , WI , October 3, 2006.
5. Bar coded medication administration and patient and employee safety , presented at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Annual Patient Safety and Health Information Technology Conference, Washington DC , June 4-7, 2006 .
6. Nurse perceptions of medication safety prior to implementing a bar code-enabled point-of-care system , presented at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Annual Patient Safety and Health Information Technology Conference, Washington DC , June 4-7, 2006 .
7. Why My New Technology Doesn't Work As Promised (Part 2).Technology Implementation and its Impact on Patient Safety, presented at the 2006 National Patient Safety Foundation Annual Congress, San Francisco , CA , May 11, 2006.
8. Barcoded Medication Administration and Employee and Patient Safety, presented at the Center for Improving Patient Safety, Vanderbilt University Medical Center , Nashville , TN , March 30, 2006 .
9. Improving Safety and Performance in Pediatric Hospitals, presented at the 2006 Performance Improvement Directors Annual Meeting, Shriners Hospitals , Tampa , FL , March 29, 2006 .
10. Systems Thinking in Healthcare: Why Things Rarely Go as Planned, presented at the Leadership Education Series, Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, February 16, 2006.
11. Patient Safety: New and Improved Technologies for New and Improved Safety Results, presented at the 2006 Health Information Management System Society Clinical Engineering and IT Leadership Forum, San Diego, CA, February 12, 2006.
12. System Design and Human Performance for Safety, presented at the 2005 Safety Summit, Providence Health System, Portland , OR , November 3, 2005 .
13. Hidden Issues in Implementing Technology: A Summary of IT Implementation Science, presented at Patient Safety and Health Information Technology:  Making the Health Care System Safer for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Washington DC, June 6, 2005.
14. Human Factors Engineering: What Is It and Why Should We Care?, presented at the Annual Quality Managers and Risk Managers Meeting, Providence Health System, Burbank, CA, February 18, 2005.
15. Systems design for patient safety and Beyond Usability for Pediatric Patient Safety, workshop presented at the 2004 Innovation Workshop Series: Leading a Patient Safety Movement for the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions, New Orleans , January 10-12, 2005 .
16. Sociotechnical systems analysis for improved patient safety, presented at the 58 th Annual Quality Congress, Toronto , Canada , American Society for Quality, May 26, 2004 .
17. Beyond technology usability: designing safe technology implementation processes", presented at the Department of Public Health, University of Sheffield, UK, sponsored by the Sheffield Patient Safety Network Guest Lecture Series, May 20, 2004.
18. Patient safety research in the macroergonomics safety and health ( MESH ) laboratory, presented at the 5 th Annual Wisconsin Patient Safety Forum, November 13, 2003 .
19. The Science of Job Satisfaction, presented at the Dissatisfaction to Action Workshop, Sponsored by the Wisconsin Medical Society, November 7, 2003.
20. Design of technology implementation for patient safety, presented at The Second United States / United Kingdom Patient Safety Methodology Workshop: Safety By Design, Sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the UK National Patient Safety Agency, September 23-24, 2003 .
21. Pharmacy specific human factors and risk management, presented at the Fifteenth Annual Federal Pharmacy Program , September 25, 2003 .
22. How can human factors engineering help improve health care safety for employees and patients?", presented at Penn State University, Herold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Distinguished Lecture Series, March 27, 2003.
23. Human factors issues in the design and implementation of information technology with specific reference to computerized physician order entry systems, presented at the 23 rd Annual Winter Symposium: Medication Safety Applications, Sponsored by the Extension Services in Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy, February 3, 2002
24. Human Factors Issues in Patient Safety and Medical Error, presented at Patient Safety: A Workshop for Medical Systems that are Ready to Implement Improvements, Sponsored by Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation, La Crosse Medical Healthsciences Consortium, VHA, Inc., January 27, 2001
25. Intervention and Evaluation Strategies for a Healthy Work Environment, presented at the 7 th Annual State Risk Management Conference (with Alvaro Taveira , PhD), November 10, 1999.
26. Psychosocial Aspects of Work and Health, presented at the Department of Motor Vehicles Management Meeting (with Francisco Moro, PhD), December 9, 1998.

Professional Society Activities

Professional Societies

International and Federal Government Grant Peer Reviewer / Study Section Panelist / Advisory Boards

Professional Organizations

Journal Activities Peer-Reviewer

Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Annals of Emergency Medicine, Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, International Journal of Nursing Studies, Theoretical Issues in Ergonomic Sciences (TIES), Behaviour and Information Technology, International Journal for Quality in Health Care, Human Factors, British Medical Journal, Applied Ergonomics, Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Safety, Quality and Safety in Health Care, International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, International Journal of Cognition, Technology & Work, International Journal of Cognitive Ergonomics

Honors, Awards and Fellowships of my Students

Post-graduation Work of my Students