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Deliberate Learning to Improve Performance in Dynamic Service Settings: Evidence from Hospital Intensive Care Units

Nembhard · Team Learning, Safety & Error · Organization Science · 2011 · Paywalled

Longitudinal study of ICUs showing that team learning investment produced worse short-term performance but significantly better outcomes over time — after three years, units with higher team learning (and higher psychological safety) had 18% lower mortality rates than those with lower team learning. The finding directly challenges the implicit assumption that learning benefits should be immediate, and provides some of the strongest long-term outcome evidence for PS in healthcare. The temporal lag between investment and return has important practical implications: organisations that evaluate PS interventions on short-term performance metrics will systematically undervalue them.

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