Oops! Why Things Go Wrong

"Oops! is not a dry, technical textbook ...but it elucidates in a readable and often entertaining style the safety concepts which have found acceptance and are now part of embedded, daily practice in aviation. While one may assume its target readership is located primarily in the healthcare sector - Downey in the role of prophet in the land of his former profession - this book distils them succinctly in a way that aviation professionals, student pilots, and safety managers in many disciplines may also find highly informative, and to be an impetus for further research." - Aerospace "I am thirty miles south of London‘s Gatwick Airport, the world‘s busiest single-runway airport, when one of the seven Flight Control computers in my Airbus A320 aircraft fails..." So begins this pioneering book by Niall Downey - a cardio-thoracic surgeon who retrained to become a commercial airline pilot - where he uses his expertise in medicine and aviation to explore the critical issue of managing human error. With further examples from business, politics, sport, technology, education and other fields, Downey makes a powerful case that by following some clear guidelines any organization can greatly reduce the incidence and impact of making serious mistakes. While acknowledging that in our fast-paced world getting things wrong is impossible to avoid completely, Downey offers a strategy based on current best practice that can make a massive difference. He concludes with an aviation-style Safety Management System that can be hugely helpful in preventing avoidable catastrophes from occurring. An acknowledged expert in error management, Niall Downey advises governments, major corporations and the health industry on how to develop a systemic approach to controlling for human imperfection. Arguing that prevention is far preferable to denying responsibility after the fact, he gave an influential TEDx talk outlining how healthcare could use aviation‘s experience to reduce tragic outcomes and improve patient safety.