Improving safety culture: a profession in the fast lane

Abstract

There is growing evidence to indicate that specific educational approaches and interventions through simulation in the classroom can significantly improve the safety culture in the perioperative environment. In exploring this approach, this article addresses the fact that, by and large, operating department practitioners (ODPs) as a professional group have been absent from this debate. The important, and indeed pivotal, role that ODPs must play in developing such a culture of enhanced patient safety should be recognised. The increased understanding of the significance of addressing practitioners' non-technical skills, such as team-working, leadership and communication, challenges all educationalists to embed these skills and an understanding of human factors into the pre-registration curriculum. This article explores the authors' own unique, innovative response to the challenge of isolating non-technical skills in a simulation context.