British journal of anaesthesia
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Aviation safety has evolved over more than a century and has achieved remarkable results. Applying some of the lessons learned may help make healthcare safer. ⋯ Although many of the ingredients for safe operation are frequently already present in our hospitals, and some individual clinical areas and departments achieve high levels of reliability and safety, I will emphasize my firm belief that we cannot expect improvements in human factors training and awareness to be fully effective in the healthcare setting without the parallel development of a simple and strong safety system across organizations. In the process, we may find that the safe hospital turns out somewhat differently to the safe airline.