Augmenting health care failure modes and effects analysis with simulation.

Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is a widely used tool for identifying latent safety hazards. Traditional FMEA relies on brainstorming among team members to detect failure modes (the ways in which a clinical process might fail). This study found that direct observation of a simulated clinical process improved the FMEA by facilitating identification of different types and a greater number of failure modes.