Our Story
Using his unusual dual qualifications as both a surgeon and an airline pilot, Niall had a unique vision: bringing aviation safety techniques – some of the most stringent in the world - to healthcare, to try to reduce the number of patients being inadvertently harmed by simple human error in our health services.
The Problem
It is now almost universally accepted that approximately 10% of hospital admissions suffer harm due to human error. It is also accepted that between 3-10% of these suffer harm leading to or contributing to their death.
In a small area such as Northern Ireland, where Niall is from, this amounts to around 40 avoidable deaths per week and around 400 patients inadvertently harmed. Extrapolate this across the European Union and you have approximately half a million avoidable deaths per year!
As Captain Downey puts it, “This is equivalent to two Airbus A380 Super-Jumbos crashing every day around the EU - a mind-blowing statistic!”
The Solution
Aviation suffered from a similar malaise in the 1970s culminating in the Tenerife disaster in 1977 when almost 600 people were killed in one avoidable accident.
“This led to new thinking,” explains Niall, “and eventually evolved into our current model of Crew Resource Management - a strategy making best use of all the resources already available to us. Aviation deaths worldwide are now generally less than 1000 annually despite over 1 billion passenger movements per year. Early research applying similar techniques to healthcare conservatively suggest an improvement rate of over 40%.”
Our Story
Using his unusual dual qualifications as both a surgeon and an airline pilot, Niall had a unique vision: bringing aviation safety techniques – some of the most stringent in the world - to healthcare, to try to reduce the number of patients being inadvertently harmed by simple human error in our health services.
The Problem
It is now almost universally accepted that approximately 10% of hospital admissions suffer harm due to human error. It is also accepted that between 3-10% of these suffer harm leading to or contributing to their death.
In a small area such as Northern Ireland, where Niall is from, this amounts to around 40 avoidable deaths per week and around 400 patients inadvertently harmed. Extrapolate this across the European Union and you have approximately half a million avoidable deaths per year!
As Captain Downey puts it, “This is equivalent to two Airbus A380 Super-Jumbos crashing every day around the EU - a mind-blowing statistic!”
The Solution
Aviation suffered from a similar malaise in the 1970s culminating in the Tenerife disaster in 1977 when almost 600 people were killed in one avoidable accident.
“This led to new thinking,” explains Niall, “and eventually evolved into our current model of Crew Resource Management - a strategy making best use of all the resources already available to us. Aviation deaths worldwide are now generally less than 1000 annually despite over 1 billion passenger movements per year. Early research applying similar techniques to healthcare conservatively suggest an improvement rate of over 40%.”
