The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch was established by the English healthcare system in 2017 to investigate serious, systemic, patient safety issues using approaches developed from aviation and other safety critical industries. The Chief Investigator is a former pilot who led the UK’s Air Accident Investigation Branch and investigators are from a range of backgrounds including healthcare, air, military and marine accident investigation and academia.
Our investigations do not seek to apportion blame or liability but are based on human factors and just culture principles. The UK government is developing legislation to offer legal protection for witness statements given during the course of investigations, which is standard practice in aviation.
Although many healthcare systems use Root Cause Analysis (RCA) to investigate patient safety events, most other safety-critical industries use a range of other methods based on human factors principles. We have carried out patient safety investigations using a variety of such models and have found that these models might be better suited to the complexities of healthcare than RCA.
Learning objectives;
By the end of this session delegates will be able to;
1. Understand the basic principles behind alternative investigation models and how we have used them in healthcare.
2. Understand the benefits and challenges of adapting approaches from aviation and other industries to healthcare.
3. Learn about some of our experiences in undertaking patient safety investigations using different methods.
Co-location with:
