Beyond the Checklist: What Healthcare Simulation Can Learn from Aviation Safety and Teamwork

The commercial aviation industry has become a beacon of safety through its Crew Resource Management Training and rigorous attention to teaching teamwork and safety for all airline personnel from the highest ranking captain to gate agents. It has been a critical example of how an industry which failed to pay enough attention to safety has become a leading example of a high reliability industry. This presentation will explain how that transformation happened, how CRM was implemented, how staff were trained and retrained, and how healthcare can follow its example. The presentation will highlight precisely what is needed to make safety and teamwork trainings work and what doesn’t work. It will consider why healthcare has not followed the example aviation and how it can change to make safety consciousness and team intelligence an approach that reduces patient death and harm, as well as enhances recruitment and retention in healthcare. These lessons have become particularly critical in an era of global pandemics where much of healthcare is now delivered via virtual Telehealth platforms.