DENTAL RISK


your dental


co-pilot Consider


Risk training consultant and former pilot Phil Higton highlights the importance of encouraging dental team members to voice concerns on patient safety issues


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ANY people will be familiar with the comparisons that have been made between the world of


aviation and healthcare, especially for anaesthetists and the operating theatre, but could the analogy also be applied to dentistry? Here the typical scenario is based around two people, a shared task, a difference in skill sets between them, with one clearly leading and being held responsible and the other supporting.


Consider the following real-life example


Shortly aſter midnight on January 3, 2004 a Flash Air aircraſt took off from Sharm- el-Sheikh for the 50 minute journey to Cairo. Te night was clear and cloudless.


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Te departure routing required a south- westerly take-off followed by a very long leſt hand turn to track north-westward towards Cairo. As the turn progressed and the limited lights around Sharm were replaced by the blackness of the Red Sea and featureless desert the pilot became disorientated and he started to lose control of the aircraſt with an ever increasing bank angle. Te other pilot was aware of the deteriorating situation but seemed inhibited in his response. In fact the worse the situation became the less he contributed. Te aircraſt crashed seven miles south of the airport killing all on board. A one-off or part of a pattern? In 1999 the


crew of a Korean cargo aircraſt taking off from Stansted became disorientated and crashed. Two Kenya Airways aircraſt


crashed for similar reasons in 2000 and 2007, as did one from Ethiopian Airlines in 2010. To air safety professionals, what is


particularly interesting in these incidents is that in every one the most experienced pilot was flying the aircraſt at the time. Te captains lost control of the situation and the cockpit voice recorders suggest that the co-pilots were aware of the divergence from a safe condition but failed to either express their concern or intervene effectively. Statistics show that worldwide captains


operate flight controls for about 60 per cent of the time but they operate the controls in 90 per cent of accidents that feature the catastrophic loss of control seen in our examples above. In Western Europe/North America we


SUMMONS


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