BOSSES within the area's hospital are adopting innovative airline-style 'black box' thinking as part of a bid to improve patient safety on its wards.

The trust that runs Barrow's Furness General Hospital has become one of the first in the region to take on the cutting edge science of Human Factors - a theory already used throughout the high-risk nuclear and civil aviation industries - and introduce it to its wards and theatres.

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It has even appointed a specialist in the approach - Armineh Shahoumian - to borrow the theory from the pages of the safety manuals of the nuclear and civil aviation industries and apply it to the healthcare environment.

Mrs Shahoumian said: "It's incredibly exciting because we are developing something new that will design out medical errors in the future.

"Human Factors is a science that is already used in high-risk industries like nuclear and aviation and it can be applied to healthcare to improve safety here as well."

The move will see hospital roles and processes examined and re-engineered to reduce and eliminate any negative external factors that can influence the way a member of staff does their job.

This can include making sure all equipment is well maintained to looking at what makes the most effective teams work so well and replicating the way they approach their job elsewhere. 

Any incidents that do happen will be examined to reduce the chance of the same thing ever happening again - in the same way a black box flight recorder provides vital information to air crash investigators.

Similarities between high-risk industries such as airlines and hospitals are already being identified - with the pressures on pilots in a cockpit during an emergency likened to those placed upon surgeons in theatre or consultants making life or death decisions in accident and emergency departments.

Mrs Shahoumian added: "These two scenarios both include people having to make fast-paced decisions under pressure, relying on equipment and other people around them.

"If there is an incident involving a flight, the safety learning is shared across the whole industry not just one airline and the changes take place very quickly.

"This is something we want to see in healthcare and a culture change we are already working to embed across this whole trust."