> Delusions of infallibility, arrogance, defensiveness, and blind deference to rank and regulation over common sense have all been shown, through the history of aviation tragedies, to be much more dangerous than all other factors.
Basically the most dangerous type of people across any situation.
> Basically the most dangerous type of people across any situation.
The amazing things is that most surgeons are like this -- the traits described are a near archetype for surgeons -- and yet outcomes for surgery are pretty damn good, and rapidly getting better for many types of surgery.
I would say that "good" is relative to what can be reasonably expected. If most surgeons fit that description, then we may not have an independent way to establish our expectations. That is, maybe we think it's "good" because we don't know better.
Hospital error is a leading cause of death in the U.S., though I don't know how much of that is due to surgery.
The only source for that I have seen assumed that if the optimal treatment was chosen that the outcome would always be positive which I suspect is not super accurate. I wish I remembered where that source was. Do you have one? Would love to look at it again.
UK hospitals are now starting to train staff in the very same techniques used in cockpit resource management, by ex airline captains, for this very reason.
This training was all kicked off by a British Airways captain whose wife died on the operating table due to the surgeons ignoring the less senior people in the operating theatre when they raised the alarm and offered solutions. More power to him.
First, those are completely different standards of safety. If airplanes felt as often as surgery fails, people would not travel on them all the time. Even radical sports are much safer than surgery.
Also, pilots must sustain a good enough performance for hours, while surgeons must sustain a great performance for minutes. Those are very different requirements, and may quite well fit different personalities.
"the traits described are a near archetype for surgeons -- and yet outcomes for surgery are pretty damn good"
We did software for Hospitals here in Europe. They told us that confidence is one of the most important things for surgeons but arrogance is very bad. We had lots of data on our hands.
Also, while surgeons are well considered here in Europe, they are not the "Ferrari at the door" US types.
One of the big problems is that people can see the errors on others, but not in oneself. So our job was basically organizing things automatically to minimize errors, using lots of psychology, like making sure other professionals could see the errors of the first, recording things and so on.
We told them that it was for University kids to learn. While true, the main idea is controlling the surgeon by other surgeons. It works flawlessly.
"infallibility" could be good for making people confident and no doubt. At the same time is very bad if applied with authority if the surgeon is bad.
This is apparently a big problem historically in countries that derive most of their commercial airline pilots from the military. It creates a culture in the cockpit where deference to rank is more important than the safety of the passengers.
There's a good reason to defer to rank and regulation over "common sense".
Our instincts and the lessons we learned in childhood are often wrong, especially in environments very different from our childhood, historical, and evolutionary environments, like aviation.
Basically the most dangerous type of people across any situation.