At the apex of the 1970s, the aviation industry found itself at the tail end of a 10-year path of negligence that culminated in the deaths of nearly 17,000 airline passengers worldwide. Amidst extensive scrutiny from the public and growing concerns that airline travel had become far too treacherous and unreliable – and as mounting data revealed that the rate of fatal incidents was, in fact, rising every year – the aviation industry reshaped its approach to safety procedures and began to reverse its rising trend of instability. Over the past 10 years, from 2006 to 2015, the rate of fatal incidents in aviation has decreased by 42%, and 2015 proved to be the safest year on record. But what happened? What was the catalyst that transformed aviation from an industry rife in oversight and carelessness to one of the safest and most dependable industries in the world?
Making the Same Mistakes
Healthcare, like aviation, is an industry that holds safety as fundamental to its operation, and, like the aviation industry of the 1970s, safety incidents in healthcare are pervasive, devastating, and threaten to increase in severity as the years progress. Unlike the aviation industry, however, healthcare incidents are rarely publicized, almost always affecting individual patients rather than dozens or hundreds at once, and do not, therefore, incite the same judgement or demand for improvement that the aviation industry faced. If the healthcare industry hopes to use aviation as a model for improving outcomes and reducing its rate of safety incidents, it must hold itself accountable and change not only its practices, but also its culture.
How Healthcare Investigations Can Learn from the Aviation Industry
While advancements in aviation technology have certainly played a role in improving overall safety and limiting accidents – as will improvements in healthcare technology aid in reducing patient safety incidents – it is most notably the increased attention to human factors and rigorous training that have made the most significant impact.
Entities such as the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) understand the importance of adopting the aviation safety model, and focus on human factors and increased training while engaging the healthcare industry with the same quality of attention and accountability that proved instrumental in reversing the trend of fatal accidents that plagued the aviation industry 40 years ago.
To ensure that healthcare investigations can effectively learn from the aviation industry, we must work hard to emphasize the importance of following rigorous guidelines and procedures, foster environments of teamwork and collaboration, and hold ourselves to a standard of accountability that rivals any previously established in the world of healthcare.