Could aviation help the medical profession?

[C]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7610645.stm

Interesting article, about bring in aviation style (and ulitimately, they originally stemmed from military style) briefings and debriefing before and after surgery. I can see it would have many advantages, but also could foresee a fair amount of resistance from a profession which often thrives on the arrogance, something that with CRM, aviation has managed to dispel to a degree.

[Craig.]

One of the interesting things out of the last couple of years was the story of some surgical teams going to F1 teams and being given instructions on team work and how to better work as a team by the pit crews of the F1 teams. These surgical teams then ended up working much better after their sessions with the F1 teams. While its obviously not possible to send every doctor and nurse to Williams or Renault to do these types of courses, I think that it would be good if there was some sort of course run by an independant company trained by the F1 teams to help all surgical teams better work together.
I think that, coupled with the Briefing and De-briefing here would bring a massive drop in surgical related incidents. And in turn lower insurance rates, and then passed on lower costs to the patients. It's not an overnight thing, but for the future these two things could bring about big changes.

[machineman9]

"We have had episodes where we have done a briefing for a procedure that required a certain piece of equipment, and the theatre nurse has said 'Mr X has that so you can't'"


That's a bit worrying!




I suppose this is working with that scheme of actually checking who the patient is before operating? The simple checklist of confirming their name, gender, and illness before starting surgery. Lol.


Be good if it works. I would have thought it be standard practise.

[H]

Could aviation help the medical profession?
When I first read this my immediate thought was, "Of course, airlifting is much faster than backpacking a victim."

8-)

[BFMF]

You would think briefings, and AAR's (After Action Reviews) would already be common in such in such professional workplaces...

[The Ruptured Duck]

I took an aviation psychology course in the fall and many lessons from CRM carry over into other professions.  CRM training has actually been apart of medical staff training for quite a while now