Hi gasman1,
Got to thinking,
Since you are already getting in to Helmreich/Hofstede, there are at least two articles where cultural dimensions were correlated with accident data:
(Commercial Accidents) Citation: Russell, P.D. (1993) Crew Factor Accidents: Regional Perspective, Proceedings of the IATA 22nd Technical Conference of the IATA on Human Factors in Aviation, Montreal, Canada, 45-61
(NATO Accidents) Citation: Soeters, J.M.M.L., & Boer, P. (2000). Culture and flight safety in military aviation. International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 10, 111-133.
Also, not sure what you have in mind but it might be interesting to look at the intrinsic/extrinsic (motivational) support/controls (as studied in education, health care and sport domains by Deci, Ryan & colleagues) present in both groups. (Very dense reading, if you need a quick review let me know and I'll send it on.)
And organizational culture/climate are categories in the HFACS model (Shappell & Weigmann,
www.hfacs.com). They’ve done some extensive analysis in the aviation domain (it's an interesting exercise to compare ther reports on 121 and 135 to GA to HEMS), not sure if anyone’s tried it in medicine. I would expect the model could transfer to any domain with a human element.
Good versus better pilots is an interesting question… What are the preferred behaviors? Attitudes? How do you define “good” performance on a flight? Adherence to canonical task paths? Communication models? A successful landing at destination? Or are we looking at judgement? Effective decision-making processes? Or handling skills? What makes one course of action “better” than others? Which was more important to Captain Haynes that day as he approached Iowa, his skill (because he was a very skilled pilot) or his luck (to have the one pilot in the world who had hundreds of simulator hours of practice using differential thrust in high-energy jets as one of his passengers)?
Sorry my earlier comments got folks on a tangent. Perhaps you were able to glean/measure some cultural traits and continuing education requirements in the responses.
All the best,
Jolly.