In a Sept. 22 op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Ms. Garcia and Dr. Gregory argued that aviation and the airline industry could lend itself to serving as a model for improving safety guidelines in healthcare.
Three insights from Ms. Garcia and Dr. Gregory:
1. Just like pilots, controllers and mechanics, clinicians and healthcare administrators must be able to clearly communicate about operations and hazards that can affect safety conditions. However, clinicians don’t have as strong standards to work off, Ms. Garcia wrote.
“Physicians, nurses and healthcare administrators are hampered by very poor adoption of standards for documentation. We struggle to communicate, but we continue to build and buy technology that uses proprietary operating systems.”
2. Ms. Garcia explained that the ONC should get enforcement power to standardize documentation terminology since the office works closely with providers to improve records interoperability and standardization of patient care documentation.
3. While integrating standards of care and checklists can help improve safety benefits in healthcare, integrating the same protocols as the aviation industry could put healthcare at “risk of discounting and dehumanizing some of the ‘art’ of medicine: the listening, caring and, yes, the laughter,” Dr. Gregory wrote.
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