Patients Are Not Airplanes

This will be the last column revisiting summer highlights. 

In late July, Sorry Works! published an essay in the Journal of Patient Safety and Risk Management entitled, "Patient Safety is Alive But Consumers Pose Challenges: Response to 'Who Killed Patient Safety?'"   As you can guess, this is a response column to an earlier essay written by Hemmelgarn et. al. which claimed patient safety has, well, been killed or made non-existent.  I argued this will be news to the legion of risk managers, quality managers, CMOs, CNOs, and others who work around the clock to make medicine safer. I personally understand that patient safety is a work in progress and far too many injuries and deaths still occur due to substandard care, but I believe we slap our allies in the face with inflammatory language claiming someone "killed" patient safety.  Patient safety is alive because of the hard work and dedication of countless professionals.  

The Hemmelgarn article also offered up the tired old trope of why can't medicine just be more like aviation?   As the son of an engineer who did a lot of work in the aviation field, I am tired of the comparison between medicine and aviation.  It's an oversimplified, unintelligent, and insulting wish that is not helpful to patient safety.  Simply put, American patients are not airplanes.  If we were magically transformed into flying machines, the majority of us would look like those broken-down hulks rusting away in airplane boneyards.  This is the reality that American physicians and nurses contend with on a daily basis, and to wish our clinician professionals would just be like pilots who fly meticulously maintained machines is ridiculous.  This whimsical thinking needs to stop, and, as I argue in the article, patients and families need to do their part to make medicine safer by reducing the strain on the system with the plethora of chronic medical conditions caused by bad choices and bad living. 

To be sure, the article is provocative, but that's what Sorry Works! does best.  Again, here is the link for the article.  Please share with colleagues and friends. 

Sincerely,

- Doug

Doug Wojcieszak, MA, MS
Founder and President
Sorry Works!
618-559-8168 (direct dial)
doug@sorryworks.net