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 and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Affairs 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 349: Introduction to Human Factors

• 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 608: 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.

Recent Invited Lectures

1. "Electronic Health Records: A Human Factors Engineering Perspective” St Mary’s Hospital and Medical Center Grand Rounds, Madison, WI November 4, 2010.
2. "Health IT and Patient Safety: A Human Factors Engineering Perspective” University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics Quality Week Lecture, Madison, WI October 18, 2010
3. "Radiotherapy Event Database” Food and Drug Administration, Washington DC, June 9, 2010, presented by Bruce Thomadsen, PhD.
4. “Patient Safety in Primary Care” UW Department of Family Medicine 40th Anniversary, July 17, 2010
5. “Safety violations during medication administration” Ohio State Industrial and Systems Engineering, ISYE Seminar Series, May 12, 2010
6. “Why don't they just use the technology!?! Patient safety through the eyes of human factors engineering” Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, May 11, 2010
7. “Safety violations in healthcare delivery” SUNY-Buffalo Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, ISYE Colloquium Series, April 9, 2010
8. “A proactive risk assessment of hazards in the primary care of the elderly” Grand Rounds, Madison Veterans Health Hospital, Geriatric Section, March 17, 2010
9. “Mixed method human factors analysis of bar coded medication administration systems” Ben Gurion University Department of Industrial Engineering, Beer Sheva, Israel, January 11, 2010.
10. “CDS integration with workflow: but what is the workflow? A human factors engineering perspective” CDS Collaboratory, Office of the National Coordinator and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Washington DC, November 12, 2009.
11. “Designing decision support systems that fit into clinical workflow” Academic Medical Center Collaborative of Eclipsys Users, Dallas, TX, October 14, 2009.
12. “Errors, workarounds, and violations: human factors engineering perspectives on health information technology.” Informatics Grand Rounds, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, November 20, 2008.
13. “Medical errors and violations and technology rejection, Oh My,” Medical Dean’s Lecture, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, November 5, 2008.
14. “Violating safety protocols in medication administration: heroes or dummies?” Industrial and Systems Engineering Dept., University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, November 5, 2008.

Professional Service

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