High-reliability teams and situation awareness: implementing a hospital emergency incident command system.

To enhance disaster preparedness, hospitals are beginning to implement the Hospital Emergency Incident Command System. Although Hospital Emergency Incident Command System provides a template for disaster preparation, its successful implementation requires an understanding of situation awareness (SA) and high-reliability teams. The authors present the concept of SA and how this concept relates to team reliability in dynamic environments. Then strategies for increasing SA and team reliability through education, training, and improved communication systems are discussed.