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"Most medical professionals are competent and skilled, and really try rather hard to avoid causing harm to their patients. But mistakes and accidents will alway

"Most medical professionals are competent and skilled, and really try rather hard to avoid causing harm to their patients. But mistakes and accidents will always happen regardless of this." I don't know if I believe this. I have found many medical professionals (not all of course) to be arrogant and cocky and even if you pointed directly to the cause of the problem, would most likely not think that those rules apply to them. "not on who is responsible for them" Mistakes happen because of people. If there isn't some sort of punishment or blame, the majority of people will just continue on with what they are doing (and the mistakes will continue to happen). We need to blame people, so they change their behavior and have less accidents in the future. We also need to know why it happened. "Blame is almost poisonous in its ability to encourage people to cover up the truth" If someone covers up the truth, they should be fired immediately. I honestly don't want someone like this working anywhere near the medical field..and neither should you. Children cover up their mistakes and lie..adults own up to their problems and admit when they made a mistake. Also, the reason pilots have less mistakes is because a computer pretty much does 99% of the work. This is not the case with surgery and medicine. Humans still do most of the work.

ISL 12y ago
Mistakes happen because of people's errors, not 'because of people'. To blame a person, rather than their actions, is to alienate them. You want everyone on your team to be focused on quality outcomes, not on avoiding blame.
- pling 12y ago
  The NHS currently runs on avoiding blame which is the problem. When someone is made accountable and the first thing they do is establish a process to avoid blame then you need to ask the question: do these people have my best interests at heart or are they avoiding being accountable? On many occasions the outcome is to avoid a breach rather than to fix a problem.
  - ZoFreX 12y ago
    The NHS also runs on overworking its employees and assuming they will still be effective at the end of a 20 hour shift with no sleep. If anyone making a completely understandable mistake due to the terrible conditions they have to work in is blamed and fired for it, would that really help? I think it's understandable for people to cover their own ass if they are expected to be infallible even under poor conditions - everyone else is doing it, if you don't the only difference it makes to the NHS is that it's down one employee. This is just one way of many possible ways that what might first appear to be a single human failing is down to a larger institutional problem.
    - pling 12y ago
      No they don't. That's the nursing unions and the press talking. It's total bollocks. The decision makers and the senior staff have considerably smaller shifts. With respect to the surgical and anaesthesiologist staffing, most of them (80%+) are contracted out and are private staff working on contract to the NHS now. A surgeon for example will probably spend two days a week on NHS cases, one day being surgical and the other being consultant and that's all you see of them. The remainder of the time is lucrative private care and occasionally teaching (which is well paid as well). There are a few exceptions to this i.e. StR's and consultants who seem to migrate into a speciality then leave after a few years. They all take the extra shifts because they're paid for the privilege of up to a 50% bonus. They're overworked because they're chasing the cash. The REAL overworked staff are mainly the support staff i.e nursing, supply, logistics. Most of them are contracted out now as well in the larger PCTs. Even with all that, no one should be allowed to cover their arses as it turns into a vicious circle of unaccountability. It's a poor excuse which must not be allowed to continue in the profession (or ANY profession to be honest).
superuser2 12y ago
Mistakes happen because of people following (or not following) processes, according to their training, education, and experience, enabled or hindered by controls, according to currently available information and courses of action, acting within a system of incentives. Punishing people for making mistakes might motivate the lazy, but it will not fix systemic issues. >Also, the reason pilots have less mistakes is because a computer pretty much does 99% of the work. This is not the case with surgery and medicine. Humans still do most of the work. A number of recent high-profile crashes were blamed, in part, on pilots' manual flying skills getting rusty due to the prevalence of automation. If anything, automation is a leading cause of pilot error.
ZoFreX 12y ago
Did you read the article? Every point you raise is addressed by it. You: Mistakes happen because of people Article: When a space shuttle crashes or an oil tanker leaks, our instinct is to look for a single, “root” cause. This often leads us to the operator: the person who triggered the disaster by pulling the wrong lever or entering the wrong line of code. But the operator is at the end of a long chain of decisions, some of them taken that day, some taken long in the past, all contributing to the accident; like achievements, accidents are a team effort. > the reason pilots have less mistakes is because a computer pretty much does 99% of the work Except in take-off and landing, which is when most accidents happen. Also, automation would not have helped at all in the United 173 situation - that was clear human error, and the reason those kinds of errors happen less are due to the accident investigation and human resource management techniques this article is talking about: > To the great credit of the aviation industry, it became one of the most influential disasters in history. Galvanised by it and a handful of other crashes from the same era, the industry transformed its training and safety practices, instituting a set of principles and procedures known as CRM: crew resource management.

ISL 12y ago

Mistakes happen because of people's errors, not 'because of people'. To blame a person, rather than their actions, is to alienate them. You want everyone on your team to be focused on quality outcomes, not on avoiding blame.

pling 12y ago
The NHS currently runs on avoiding blame which is the problem. When someone is made accountable and the first thing they do is establish a process to avoid blame then you need to ask the question: do these people have my best interests at heart or are they avoiding being accountable? On many occasions the outcome is to avoid a breach rather than to fix a problem.
- ZoFreX 12y ago
  The NHS also runs on overworking its employees and assuming they will still be effective at the end of a 20 hour shift with no sleep. If anyone making a completely understandable mistake due to the terrible conditions they have to work in is blamed and fired for it, would that really help? I think it's understandable for people to cover their own ass if they are expected to be infallible even under poor conditions - everyone else is doing it, if you don't the only difference it makes to the NHS is that it's down one employee. This is just one way of many possible ways that what might first appear to be a single human failing is down to a larger institutional problem.
  - pling 12y ago
    No they don't. That's the nursing unions and the press talking. It's total bollocks. The decision makers and the senior staff have considerably smaller shifts. With respect to the surgical and anaesthesiologist staffing, most of them (80%+) are contracted out and are private staff working on contract to the NHS now. A surgeon for example will probably spend two days a week on NHS cases, one day being surgical and the other being consultant and that's all you see of them. The remainder of the time is lucrative private care and occasionally teaching (which is well paid as well). There are a few exceptions to this i.e. StR's and consultants who seem to migrate into a speciality then leave after a few years. They all take the extra shifts because they're paid for the privilege of up to a 50% bonus. They're overworked because they're chasing the cash. The REAL overworked staff are mainly the support staff i.e nursing, supply, logistics. Most of them are contracted out now as well in the larger PCTs. Even with all that, no one should be allowed to cover their arses as it turns into a vicious circle of unaccountability. It's a poor excuse which must not be allowed to continue in the profession (or ANY profession to be honest).

superuser2 12y ago

Mistakes happen because of people following (or not following) processes, according to their training, education, and experience, enabled or hindered by controls, according to currently available information and courses of action, acting within a system of incentives. Punishing people for making mistakes might motivate the lazy, but it will not fix systemic issues. >Also, the reason pilots have less mistakes is because a computer pretty much does 99% of the work. This is not the case with surgery and medicine. Humans still do most of the work. A number of recent high-profile crashes were blamed, in part, on pilots' manual flying skills getting rusty due to the prevalence of automation. If anything, automation is a leading cause of pilot error.

ZoFreX 12y ago

Did you read the article? Every point you raise is addressed by it. You: Mistakes happen because of people Article: When a space shuttle crashes or an oil tanker leaks, our instinct is to look for a single, “root” cause. This often leads us to the operator: the person who triggered the disaster by pulling the wrong lever or entering the wrong line of code. But the operator is at the end of a long chain of decisions, some of them taken that day, some taken long in the past, all contributing to the accident; like achievements, accidents are a team effort. > the reason pilots have less mistakes is because a computer pretty much does 99% of the work Except in take-off and landing, which is when most accidents happen. Also, automation would not have helped at all in the United 173 situation - that was clear human error, and the reason those kinds of errors happen less are due to the accident investigation and human resource management techniques this article is talking about: > To the great credit of the aviation industry, it became one of the most influential disasters in history. Galvanised by it and a handful of other crashes from the same era, the industry transformed its training and safety practices, instituting a set of principles and procedures known as CRM: crew resource management.