The key enabling theme throughout the North East’s Patient Safety Programme, Safer Care North East, was the introduction of Human Factors to facilitate improvements in Patient Safety.
Guy, Trevor and the Atrainability team have mastered the technique of translating and communicating the learning messages from Aviation to Healthcare very effectively. The North East Strategic Health Authority has worked closely with Atrainability for the last 2 years and they have been heavily involved in our Safer Care North East Programme. The work began with Newcastle Hospitals Neurosurgery Department and has spread significantly since that began in early 2009. We now have a number of Trained Human Factor Trainers in the North East who are clinical leaders, in a position to implement this into their own healthcare teams. Guy, Trevor and their team have then supported this implementation by providing coaching to these trainers and their teams in the clinical setting at the frontline and human factors is becoming common place in our clinical areas.
Our programme has been a huge success, however our key learning points were:
- Get your clinical leaders to the Human Factors awareness days –however make sure once you have raised the awareness you have the capacity to feed the hunger it creates !
- Make sure you have the support planned thereafter – transferring these skills into practice is quite different to learning it in the classroom so coaching and support from the experts is a requirement!
We are seeing some positive changes in the North East and would highly recommend such an approach to others. We still have staff contacting us asking when Guy and Trevor are next coming to the North East!!!
Emma Nunez - Safer Care North East Programme Manager
Yvonne Evans - Strategic Head of Patient Safety
“The great skills of Guy Hirst, Trevor Dale and their colleagues is that they’ve successfully bridged the gulf between the flight deck and the operating theatre. Effective leadership, team management, clear communications, briefings, debriefings, coping with authority gradients and other non-technical skills have a vital part to play in both domains. Guy Hirst and his colleagues at Atrainability have done a wonderful job of persuading health care professionals that these skills are vital to patient safety in a variety of hospital settings. Not only that, they have convinced health carers that these are skills that must be trained and practised; they don’t come ready-made, or at least only too rarely. Captains Hirst, Dale and their training captain colleagues are indeed the most acceptable and beneficial face of aviation human factors".
Professor James Reason, Professor Emeritus
The University of Manchester
"As an emergency physician I was sceptical about how ideas developed in the aviation industry could be applied to the emergency setting. Having now trained with Trevor and Guy I realise that so much of their knowledge in human factors is in fact transferrable to my practice and I am now clearly much better equipped to identify and resolve human factor problems. With their help I feel that I now have completed my journey from cynic - sceptic – believer – advocate of human factors training to the benefit of my patients and my colleagues in the emergency team".
Simon Carley Consultant in Emergency Medicine, Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Professor, Centre for Effective Emergency Care, Manchester Metropolitan University
"Your insights were extremely perceptive and I have been feeding back to the nurses both at Chase Farm and at Kings Oak who I think are enjoying, possibly for the first time, having to think about why a team functions well or why it needs to do better".
"Professor Ellis Downes Gynaecologist and Obstetrician - Minimal Access Surgeon
"It has been a huge privilege working with Captains Guy Hirst and Trevor Dale over the past 10 years in both a research and training capacity. I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending Atrainability to support any human factors training and team work initiatives in the medical profession".
Dr Allan Goldman
Lead Consultant for The Cardiac Intensive Care Unit
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London
"Guy and Trevor spent decades repeatedly forming high performance teams...airline crews, randomly assigned, yet accountable as a team for the safety and delivery of hundreds of passengers and valuable aircraft each flight. Every flight presents challenges due to the complex, often unpredictable interactions of weather, machine, human, procedure, business, and global events. Having flown with these gentlemen, I assure you that Atrainability can launch any team to a higher level !"
Tom Henricks, NASA Astronaut and commander/pilot of four Space Shuttle missions
"I have worked with Trevor and Guy for the last eighteen months and am happy to testify to the quality of their work and the depth of their experience. Their input into the Theatre Safety Training research project here has been invaluable. As well as vast experience, they bring a thorough theoretical knowledge of safety and teamwork issues, a highly professional attitude and excellent presentational skills particularly in relation to small group work."
"Peter McCulloch MBChB, MA, MD, FRCS (Ed), FRCS (Glas)
Clinical Reader in Surgery
University of Oxford Nuffield Department of Surgery
"My main contribution to the study of human factors in surgical outcomes has been my collaboration with human factor experts. I am particularly grateful to James Reason who in 1991 published a seminal book on human errors and who is the father of the organisational accident theory which has now been extensively applied to healthcare. I am equally grateful to two BA pilots, Guy Hirst and Trevor Dale, with whom I have collaborated closely for the past three years. They brought to my research team twenty years of experience in applied human factor research in the aviation industry."
Professor Marc de Leval MD, FRCS
International Congenital Cardiac Centre
Harley Street London
"Many thanks for a very interesting view of leadership and I personally found this of particular use for my clinical practice. I have been to so many managerial leadership courses that are basically all the same and your presentation was so different - it made me think about my own practice. I look forward to hearing more of your work - it is generating a lot of interest in the surgical world. Thanks to both Guy and Trevor".
Dr Simon Raimes MD, FRCS, FRCS(Ed)
"Jet Airways contracted Guy Hirst and Trevor Dale from Atrainability to conduct a Train the Trainers course in Mumbai. The trainers were a mix of experienced examiners and inexperienced check pilots the latter with no instructional background and relatively low time as Captains. I have many years of airline management experience and have attended many courses of this nature but have never witnessed a more enthusiastic reaction by the participants due to the course content which had been tailored to meet Jet requirements and also the very professional and enjoyable delivery by Guy and Trevor. Our other trainers are now very anxious to be included on any future courses".
Captain Ray Heiniger
Jet Airways
"An excellent link between theory and practical, resulting in improved understanding and performance when dealing with customers"
Keith Trobridge, Head of Security, Canary Wharf
"Whilst early training necessarily concentrates on single pilot needs, the student’s future lies in the very different operational environment of a 2-pilot, multi-engine commercial flight deck. A specially selected team (Atrainability) of current, highly experienced airline training captains offer Oxford Air Training students a bespoke, 4-day module, designed to focus minds firmly on the future. This highly participative exercise has proved an invaluable and deservedly popular scene-setter for the more advanced flying and jet simulator training still to come".
Oxford Aviation Academy - Flight Training
“The SLIPS course was absolutely fabulous and has had a tremendous impact on the way I handle situations at work now.
”Zeena Makhija University Hospital of Wales.
"I really enjoyed the course Atrainability gave last week, it was excellent and something I think everyone in the NHS would benefit from."
Vanessa Garside
Nurse Practitioner - Cardiac Services
Great Ormond Street Hospital For Children