I am sure many heard a report in the last few days about a Japanese Airline that clipped another smaller plane while landing, burst into flame and yet hundreds of passengers were able to evacuate before the plane was fully consumed by the fire. Miraculous….. or was it?
The airline industry spends a good bit of time practicing a lot for events that are incredibly low risk, but also highly devastating. They run simulations and practice a huge amount for just this sort of horrible event. Those flight attendants are not there to give you a drink or help with your luggage (or scold rude passengers). They are there for our safety. They train a lot to help determine what is happening in a crisis and then help direct people to safety. In the event above, the flight attendants had to determine which side of a plane that was on fire, was the best to direct people to safety. So it’s not miraculous, it is what well trained professionals do when they have a lot of practice and know exactly what to do.
If you compare this to the health system, we don’t practice for the rare but catastrophic events with the same rigor. Trying to ensure that providers all can provide CPR to a patient or a family member or even someone they love, is really hard. Providers are frustrated that they have to do the training and the practice. So what’s the difference? Do physicians and nurses don’t care about these events that might save lives? I think the answer is “no”, so what is happening?
There is a difference in how these two industries approach the needed training and practice. The aviation industry sets time for training and simulation. It is built into the schedule for these professionals and they are paid to do this because it is part of their job. For healthcare providers, particularly physicians, the expectation to train and practice may not be built in to their schedules. Nurses do sometime get paid for the extra time to train, but physicians rarely do. If you consider the amount of time that many physicians already work in a week, it is a lot to ask that they just add this to their already very long day. The training may also not be as focused or in simulators that accurately recreate the true experience of providing care in high risk but rare circumstances.
A few last thoughts. A lot of people survived a catastrophic airline accident because of the professionalism of the crew and a group of passengers that followed direction. We should all pay attention to the safety briefing at the beginning of each flight. We should also make certain that health care providers have the time it takes to also practice rare events so they can keep their patients as safe as the passengers on that Japanese plane.