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Comprehensive Injury Center (CIC)

Collaborative for Healthcare Harm, Hazard, and Risk Reduction and Prevention (CHiRP)

The Comprehensive Injury Center’s Collaborative for Healthcare Harm, Hazard, and Risk Reduction and Prevention (CHiRP ) is dedicated to preventing and reducing harm to patients and healthcare workers. Through its interdisciplinary approach, CHiRP brings together researchers, healthcare providers, patients, and people with lived experience to improve healthcare experiences and outcomes.
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Mission

To connect and support interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners seeking to prevent and/or reduce preventable harm to patients and healthcare workers.

Core Principles:

  • Healthcare harm is the result of hazards within complex sociotechnical systems- involving people, environments, tools and technology-and their interactions with other system components.
  • Healthcare providers are a source of safety through their adaptative actions.
  • The phenomena labeled as “error” is a product of complex system interactions and NOT the cause of harm events. Instead, error is a symptom of poorly designed systems
  • Harm reduction and prevention require collaboration with non-healthcare disciplines including (but not limited to) human factors engineers, psychologists, experts in design, patients and families, and clinicians.
  • That said, zero harm can be an aspiration but never a goal. It is literally impossible to achieve zero harm because the system is complex and dynamic.

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Who Should Join?

CHiRP is open to anyone at MCW, Froedtert, Children’s Wisconsin, and the Zablocki VA looking to study patient and provider safety. By joining, you may receive operational consulting and guidance, research and collaboration opportunities, and access to educational training and resources.

How to Join

Contact Dr. Matthew Scanlon (mscanlon@mcw.edu) or Dr. Colleen Trevino (ctrevino@mcw.edu) for more information on membership.

Publications

  1. Ladell, M. M., Jacobson, N. L., Yale, S. C., McDermott, K. L., Papautsky, E. L., Catchpole, K. R., & Scanlon, M. C. (2025). The problem with how we view medical (and diagnostic) error in emergency medicine. Academic Emergency Medicine, 32(3), 340–347. https://doi.org/10.1111/acem.15076
  2. Scanlon, M.C., Venkitachalam, R. & Catchpole, K. When is a central venous access device not a central venous access device? When it is a hazard. Pediatr Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-024-03428-5
  3. Ladell, M. M., Yale, S., Bordini, B. J., Scanlon, M. C., Jacobson, N., & Papautsky, E. L. (2024). Why a sociotechnical framework is necessary to address diagnostic error. BMJ Quality & Safety.
  4. Snooks KC, Wehrenberg K, Rajzer-Wakeham K, Nelson H, Rothschild C, Rajapreyar P, Luetje M, Scanlon MC, Petersen TL, Meyer MT. (2025) Pediatric Mass Casualty Incident and a Critical Care Response. Disaster Medicine and Public Health. 10.1017/dmp.2025.25
  5. Schnell JL, Tager JB, Kenney AE, Lim P, Everhart S, Joaningsmei S, Balisteri KA, Morgan-Tautges A, Berridge K, Brophey M, Rothschild C, Scanlon MC, Davies WH, Lee KJ. (2025) Impact of Systems of Care on Emotional Well-Being of Primary Family Caregivers of Children with Medical Complexity. Maternal and Child Health Journal. 10.1007/s10995-025-04066-x
  6. Scanlon M, Jacobson N. Safety I, Safety II, and the New Views of Safety. PSNet [internet]. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, US Department of Health and Human Services. 2025.

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