Keynote 3 – Safety in high reliability industries – What healthcare professionals can learn

 

Nuclear power, air traffic control, chemical processing: Often-quoted examples of industries based on high reliability organisations. They operate in hazardous settings in a safe and reliable way. This high reliability is often achieved by simplification and standardisation of operations and anticipation of organisational disruptions. Healthcare organisations, like hospitals, share the same goals with regard to predictability, safety and effective operations. Nevertheless, patients are still exposed to preventable harm with errors occurring along the patient care process every day. The variability of the individual patient, gaps in knowledge, evolving technologies with high complexity and economic and regulatory pressures, however, pose explicit challenges for healthcare organisations and mark differences between healthcare and other high reliability industries. Healthcare is striving to improve by also taking a look at others. Which strategies, procedures, tools and concepts are used to reach and guarantee a high level of reliability? And which of these could potentially be emulated in healthcare organisations?

 

 

• To give background knowledge of high reliability industries with regard to safety and the analysis and management of risks and potential dangers;

• To illustrate tools and concepts applied in high reliability organisations potentially fostering patient safety in healthcare organisations. 

 

 

After the presentation the participant should be able:

 

• to outline key characteristics of high reliability industries, similarities and challenging differences to healthcare;

• to describe potential strategies for safety improvement in healthcare organisations.