How about if the medical industry aspires to aviation's lower level of fatalities? In the US in 2024, the total number of aviation fatalities (commercial and private) was 306. But the toll from US Medical errors is estimated at > 200,000.
Patients' diseases are scheduled. If there are too many patients already ill right now, they simply are not allowed to get sick. Circle around and around, until it's your turn. We'll let you know when it's your turn. There are resources to take care of the patients when they get sick and if what they need is not available, they will simply not get sick until it is. The care provided is absolutely standardized so it doesn't matter which doctor sees which patient, no one expects or is granted any deviation from the standard, even if it's uncomfortable or they miss their connection with the surgeon. There won't be another surgeon in the hospital until tomorrow at 2. Please take care of yourself until then.
Medicine, education and government all seem to do very poorly when treated as businesses (which seems to be happening a lot nowadays). In my opinion, although important lessons can be carried over from industries which aim to make a profit, treating patients, students and citizens as customers is a really bad idea. It appears to me that this is actually a big challenge for our society right now.
The lesson I would take from aviation is risk management. The plane did not fail when the door came off the Alaska flight. Decades of after action reviews fed back into the design process. The plane was designed with multiple redundant system to reduce failure. Accident investigation leads to a detailed root cause. It constantly works to remove uncertainty and modify system design. In an aerospace engineering world we would systematically focus on reducing the probability of chronic disease, and the consequence of its impact when it occurs. We would work to make the system resilient against stochastic events.
Excellent analogy. Patient satisfaction fueled the opiate crisis, especially when the ridiculous “pain is the 5th vital sign” was implemented. I have had a few post op hospital stays where I wasn’t “satisfied” but I was treated for the problem I came in for and improved. I LOVE the airline analogy - as a private pilot, we always say, “Don’t adhere to your plans to fly unless you have the time to wait on Mother Nature.”
Thank you doctor! I'm a fan of aviation mishap reports and analysis on YouTube. There are many of them, involving both commercial and private flights. The causes (as in medicine I suppose) are usually a cascade of events, including of course weather, which isn't always perfectly predictable.
How about if the medical industry aspires to aviation's lower level of fatalities? In the US in 2024, the total number of aviation fatalities (commercial and private) was 306. But the toll from US Medical errors is estimated at > 200,000.
Patients' diseases are scheduled. If there are too many patients already ill right now, they simply are not allowed to get sick. Circle around and around, until it's your turn. We'll let you know when it's your turn. There are resources to take care of the patients when they get sick and if what they need is not available, they will simply not get sick until it is. The care provided is absolutely standardized so it doesn't matter which doctor sees which patient, no one expects or is granted any deviation from the standard, even if it's uncomfortable or they miss their connection with the surgeon. There won't be another surgeon in the hospital until tomorrow at 2. Please take care of yourself until then.
Thank you for this essay.
Medicine, education and government all seem to do very poorly when treated as businesses (which seems to be happening a lot nowadays). In my opinion, although important lessons can be carried over from industries which aim to make a profit, treating patients, students and citizens as customers is a really bad idea. It appears to me that this is actually a big challenge for our society right now.
The lesson I would take from aviation is risk management. The plane did not fail when the door came off the Alaska flight. Decades of after action reviews fed back into the design process. The plane was designed with multiple redundant system to reduce failure. Accident investigation leads to a detailed root cause. It constantly works to remove uncertainty and modify system design. In an aerospace engineering world we would systematically focus on reducing the probability of chronic disease, and the consequence of its impact when it occurs. We would work to make the system resilient against stochastic events.
Excellent analogy. Patient satisfaction fueled the opiate crisis, especially when the ridiculous “pain is the 5th vital sign” was implemented. I have had a few post op hospital stays where I wasn’t “satisfied” but I was treated for the problem I came in for and improved. I LOVE the airline analogy - as a private pilot, we always say, “Don’t adhere to your plans to fly unless you have the time to wait on Mother Nature.”
Thank you doctor! I'm a fan of aviation mishap reports and analysis on YouTube. There are many of them, involving both commercial and private flights. The causes (as in medicine I suppose) are usually a cascade of events, including of course weather, which isn't always perfectly predictable.