Error reporting and safety psychology
I trust this is an appropriate question for this forum. If not, I apologize in advance (and would someone let me know so I don't bother people).
I am an associate dean at a medical university (SUNY Upstate Medical University).
We are currently engaged in a project to understand the genesis and development of medical errors and how they may be identified and prevented. It seems to me that somewhere in pilot training there is a fundamental change that occurs that helps pilots function within a precise set of operational rules. Increased numbers of rules seems to have the effect of improvement in error reduction and reoccurance. In medicine, the implementation of operational rules and guidelines and/or implementation of new safety devices seems to have little change on error occurance. Part of this may stem from the fact that in medicine, error identification and reporting is usually greeted with a punative response from regulatory systems. I would like to try to understand what goes on in pilot training that engenders such an appreciation of rule compliance and error reporting and try to understand how (or if) this might be translated into medical systems. One of my suspicions is that while errors both in medicine and aviation may lead to disastorous outcomes, the time and ability to 'correct' may be greater in medicine. Is there someone(s) who would like to discuss this further?
Thanks.