Oops! Why Things Go Wrong: Understanding and Controlling Error

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From 1st July 2021, VAT will be applicable to those EU countries where VAT is applied to books - this additional charge will be collected by Fed Ex (or the Royal Mail) at the time of delivery. Shipments to the USA & Canada: I’ve made mistakes, every doctor will make mistakes, but how can we limit them? Niall Downey’s unique perspective as both pilot and doctor has enabled him to apply the lessons learned by the airline industry to modern medicine. This book should be mandatory reading for everyone with an interest in healthcare, i.e. everyone.’– Dr Liam Farrell, author of Are You the F**king Doctor?

Society is also, unfortunately, very intolerant of error, especially in others. We need to change this mindset. Society’s development has accelerated at warp speed over recent decades and shows no signs of slowing down. Unfortunately, our brains have had trouble keeping up and are trying to function in a highly complex, rapidly changing environment while still running on caveman software! When I jumped ship to retrain as an airline pilot, I was somewhat disorientated by a completely different approach to error.”Captain Niall Downey originally qualified in medicine, training in cardiothoracic surgery, before deciding to change career for commercial aviation. In this great new book, Niall shares his unique expertise and insight from both professions to help healthcare colleagues learn how to reduce their chance of medical error.’– Professor Peter Brennan, Consultant Oral & Maxillo-Facial Surgeon Again, the statistics are clear: total deaths globally in commercial jet aviation in 1977 numbered around 3.000 people while currently figures are less than 1,000 annually despite an almost 10-fold increase in passenger numbers. Indeed. in 2017 the number of deaths globally was zero! This is due largely to our focus on Human Factors since the late 70s. When I moved out of healthcare and retrained as an airline pilot, I was somewhat disorientated by a completely different approach to error. It was seen as inevitable and, therefore, something to be dealt with, not to be ashamed of. Inside every mistake, there are lessons waiting to get out,” says Dr Peter Honey, who helps companies and employees work better. With success, he says, people tend to celebrate when things go well without always understanding why. With mistakes, people are more likely to work out why things go wrong so they can avoid the same thing happening again. “The good thing about all mistakes, large or small, is that they provide superb learning opportunities.” Move on Other industries are by no means immune from error. Agriculture, for instance, has the highest mortality rate among workers in the UK and Ireland. UK figures show deaths consistently running at 20 times higher than other industries. Errors in the financial industry led to a global meltdown of financial markets in 2008, the effects of which are still being felt.

If you want to find a literary or illustration agent or publisher, would like to self-publish or crowdfund your creative idea then this Yearbook will help you. As well as sections on publishers and agents, newspapers and magazines, illustration and photography, theatre and screen, there is a wealth of detail on the legal and financial aspects of being a writer or illustrator. In this ground-breaking book, Niall Downey – a cardio-thoracic surgeon who retrained to become a commercial airline pilot – uses his expertise in medicine and aviation to explore the critical issue of managing human error. With further examples from business, politics, sport, technology, the civil service and other fields, Downey makes a powerful case that by following some clear guidelines any organisation can greatly reduce the incidence and impact of human error. Perhaps it’s time to teach people how to analyse information to try to separate the wheat from the chaff.” I was sitting at the nurses’ station on a ward in a major Belfast hospital. The bed closest to me had the curtains pulled. The ‘crash’ team had just left and behind the curtains was an elderly lady who had just died from irrecoverable cardiac failure, precipitated by me prescribing her more intravenous fluids than her ailing heart was apparently able to handle. I had just killed my first patient! In this blog, Niall Downey talks about his book, Oops! Why Things Go Wrong, which explores why error is inevitable, how it affects many different industries and areas of society, sometimes catastrophically, how it is sometimes actually quite efficient from a physiological standpoint and, most importantly, what we can do about it.In this ground-breaking book, Niall Downey - a cardio-thoracic surgeon who retrained to become a commercial airline pilot - uses his expertise in medicine and aviation to explore the critical issue of managing human error. With further examples from business, politics, sport, technology, the civil service and other fields, Downey makes a powerful case that by following some clear guidelines any organisation can greatly reduce the incidence and impact of human error. I was sitting at the nurses’ station on a ward in a major Belfast hospital. The bed closest to me had the curtains pulled. The ‘crash’ team had just left and behind the curtains was an elderly lady who had just died from irrecoverable cardiac failure, precipitated by me prescribing her more intravenous fluids than her ailing heart was apparently able to handle. I had just killed my first patient.