Recognising human factors and minimising error

Human error is thought to be responsible for almost 70% of aviation accidents. Although pilots are often blamed for these, there are, in fact, many people involved in aircraft control, such as engineers, air traffic controllers and aviation companies themselves (de Carvalho et al, 2009).

The aviation industry has identified and recognised the impact of factors that can contribute to these human errors, such as tiredness, stress and fatigue. Medicine has taken note and began to apply the same principles in the operating theatre (Barker, 2007; O’Connor et al, 2010).

Since the publication of To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System by Kohn et al in 2000, more attention has been focused on wrong site surgery. Within the UK, the risk of serious medical error in hospital remains at almost one a day (Young and Regan, 2010). The operating theatre is a particularly high-risk area, with more harm caused by errors here than elsewhere in a hospital (Barker, 2007; O’Connor et al, 2010).