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A human factors approach to patient safety Aviation


between pilots and cabin crew more often than not would feature in the final analysis as having been a contributory factor. Up until the 1980s the airline captain was often a figure to be feared and revered. His status as the unassailable head of the team was further reinforced through the language used at the time – as an overspill from the military beginnings of the industry, junior crew were trained to call the captain ‘sir’ and respect was an expected rather than an earned privilege. A very significant change in air transport operations in the past several decades has been recognition that safety and efficiency require a ‘team effort’ and that the team involves more than just the flight deck crew. During the 1980s specific human factors awareness training was developed and became compulsory across the industry – it became known as Crew Resource Management training (CRM) and served to break


A 016 HOSPITAL BUILD & INFRASTRUCTURE MAGAZINE ISSUE 1 2012


viation is now considered to be very safe but its history is littered with stories of disasters. Subsequent investigations would often reveal them to have been caused by human error – poor communication


lessons from By: Jill O’Connell, Managing Director of Leading Edge Consultancy, Dubai, UAE


down many of the barriers, which had been built up over time, enabling improved communication across the team.


ANALYSIS IN AVIATION FOUND:  Over 70% of accidents and incidents involve human error  Aviation is a team endeavour involving a crew interacting with outside resources  Most training has focused on technical aspects of tasks


HEALTHCARE ORGANISATIONS Clearly correlations with healthcare exist. Available statistics on preventable errors in healthcare provide alarming reading. The first of three recent Institute of Medicine reports on the quality of healthcare in America, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, states: “Healthcare is a decade or more behind other high-risk industries in its attention to ensuring basic safety.” It has become obvious that the healthcare organisations’ traditional reliance on competent people to do the right thing


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