Medical errors in the United States cost $17 billion a year, according to the Institute of Medicine. LifeWings Partners LLC, a firm specializing in reducing costs through aviation safety tools, believes such tools can decrease medical errors, thereby eliminating the costs associated with them.
While safety is essential to both airline passengers and operating room patients, safety errors occur in both settings due to miscommunications and time restraints. Pilots adhere to rigorous safety checklists before takeoff. The more thoroughly enforced these checklists are, the less likely there will be any problems.
A former U.S. Navy flight instructor and commercial airline pilot founded LifeWings in 1999. The company provides on-site aviation-based training and safety tools known as Crew Resource Management. LifeWings' program for training OR workers takes approximately five months.
There are five main elements in the LifeWings hospital program:
- leadership, which prepares the leadership team of hospital and designs measurement program
- skills-based training, which includes observations of current hospital practices
- hardwired safety tools, such as checklists, protocols, procedures and scripts
- measurement of project success and return on investment
- train-the-trainer, in which trainee staff conduct training sessions.
The program specializes in teamwork tactics and effective communication strategies - both essential to solving problems in the OR. LifeWings is hoping to break the pattern of errors caused by poor communication with their "stop-the-line culture." This tactic encourages everyone in the OR to speak up if they feel uncomfortable with the procedure so that all misgiving or miscommunications will be dealt with before proceeding to the next step.
Some 1,500 patients in the United States have objects left inside of them after surgery, each year, almost always requiring corrective follow-up surgery. LifeWings reported that one hospital, after implementing their strategies was able to reduce their incidences of retained objects from surgery by 75 percent.
According to LifeWings, the elimination of erroneous procedures during surgery results in fewer malpractice claims. The average wrong-surgery malpractice award is estimated to be around $350,000.
The program also guarantees improvement in OR turnaround, post surgical infections, expected mortality rates and employee satisfaction. Data has suggested that turnover rates in healthcare staffing have reached 20.7 percent for all positions. Hospitals spend approximately $25,000 to replace a nurse, according to Steve Harden, president of LifeWings and former Navy top gun pilot.
"Both the hospital and physician win by training and results, especially when surgeons are alerted to potential problems by their nursing team," Harden said. OR workers realize what could have happened without the LifeWings training, he noted. "They see the value of a more open team environment pretty quickly."