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From the CRC Blog: Checklists, training, and simulators

Credentialing & Verification Update, January 21, 2009

Aviation safety and preventing medical errors are topics that usually catch our eye. Rita Schwab’s blog has a great article about lessons learned from Flight 1549 and how comparisons have been drawn between healthcare and aviation in recent years. In discussions about medical error prevention, the question usually comes up about who you trust more: the pilot of the plane you are flying in or your healthcare provider. Chances are the majority will select the pilot.

My husband is a pilot and I know from his description of checklists, recurrent training sessions, and simulator training just how much detail goes into making sure certain procedures become second nature in performance. Although he rarely has had an occasion to take such action while flying, he and his team practice how to ditch a plane, put out engine fires, and land in adverse conditions. Preventing an accident starts with the first readiness step to get the plane in the air.

A recent article in The New York Times, Simple Checklist Makes Surgery Safe, explains that surgical teams are now implementing checklists to reduce surgical complications. What is a primary cause of such errors that can be reduced with a checklist? Communication problems. Before the surgery begins, nurses and physicians are confirming that sterilization procedures have been completed, the patient has been adequately prepared, the surgical site is confirmed, and that appropriate equipment is at hand to handle any medical need (blood, oxygen, etc). This checklist may cause a drop in death and complication rates.

In addition to checklists and training, another recent article recommended creating a curriculum that would address both error prevention and response as well as establish a team of expert first responders who would guide patients and clinicians when medical errors occur. That article is “Guilty, Afraid, and Alone - Struggling with Medical Error,” by Tom Delbanco, MD and Sigall Bell, MD, and it appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Seems like a great approach to aligning aviation safety with healthcare error prevention.

Carole La Pine, MSA, CPMSM, CPCS is the Manager for Physician Services at Trinity Health in Novi, MI. Carole has more than 30 years of experience in the medical staff services profession and is a past president of National Association Medical Staff Services (NAMSS). Read more from Carole at the Credentialing Resource Center Blog.

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