Human factors in anaesthesia: lessons from aviation
Aviation safety has evolved over more than a century and has achieved remarkable results. Applying some of the lessons learned may help make healthcare safer. Although many of the ingredients for safe operation are frequently already present in our hospitals, and some individual clinical areas and departments achieve high levels of reliability and safety, we cannot expect improvements in human factors training and awareness to be fully effective in the healthcare setting without the parallel development of a simple and strong safety system across organizations. In the process, we may find that the safe hospital turns out somewhat differently to the safe airline.
