[parados]

Here is another attempt to try and get health care systems to learn how to deal with fallibility. In this case a woman died unnecessarily during a minor operation, however her husband was an airline pilot and he is now trying to teach the UK National Health Service the lessons that airlines learned long ago: http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/05/how-mistakes-can-save-li...

[danso]

Thank you for posting this...surgery is one of the few professions that I think about, and then think, "Nope, no way, not even in the wildest dreams in an alternative universe, that I could ever be a surgeon"...but I get the sense that so much pride is tied up into the skill of a surgeon, such that mechanical ability and intuition are almost inextricable. I have no problem with the assertion that a human expert is needed to make decisions as the cuts are being made. But it's astonishing to me that so much of the success of surgery relies on a near-superhuman ability of muscle control and focus, an ability that surely declines with age, even as the surgeon's wisdom and experience grows. I would love to read more about "autopilot"-type advances in medicine (though too much of the coverage focuses on, "Will robots replace your doctor?" rather than man-and-machine working together)