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The nuclear power industry as an alternative analogy for safety in anaesthesia and a novel approach for the conceptualisation of safety goals
Author(s) -
Webster C. S.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
anaesthesia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.839
H-Index - 117
eISSN - 1365-2044
pISSN - 0003-2409
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2044.2005.04301.x
Subject(s) - patient safety , medicine , nuclear power industry , pace , scope (computer science) , analogy , identification (biology) , nuclear power , risk analysis (engineering) , system safety , diagrammatic reasoning , health care , medical emergency , computer science , engineering , reliability engineering , geodesy , ecology , linguistics , philosophy , botany , geography , economics , biology , programming language , economic growth
Summary Safety practices in health care have not kept pace with the increasing complexity of medical technology. Although anaesthesia is generally considered to be a leader in the improvement of patient safety, more powerful safety strategies must be found and employed. From an analysis of system characteristics, the nuclear power industry is proposed as an alternative analogy for safety in anaesthesia, and a novel diagrammatic approach is developed for the conceptualisation of safety goals. The nuclear power industry has spent vastly more time and money than has health care on the development of safety, and has progressed through significant safety milestones approximately three times more quickly than has anaesthesia. The greatest scope for the improvement of safety in anaesthesia lies in the appropriate re‐design of medical systems and the lowering of the threshold for the reporting of incidents to include accident precursors, thus allowing the identification of dangerous systems before accidents occur.