Safety Culture in veterinary Anaesthesia
Safety Culture can be summarised in three points:
- minimise the risks associated with human error;
- to this end, implement organisational, strategic and logistical measures at the level of veterinary teams;
- for two major benefits:
- increase the patient safety and quality of anaesthesia;
- increase the serenity of teams when performing these anaesthetic interventions;
More in detail...
What is Safety Culture?
The adage "to err is human" is a reality and the cause of the majority of incidents and accidents in civil aviation and human anaesthesia. There are no specific studies on veterinary anaesthesia, but why should it be any different?
Taking into account the fact that "to err is human", and therefore human factors, is part of the Safety Culture approach and goes hand in hand with a reduction in risk.
Safety Culture is a work philosophy that implements tools for preventing and detecting errors in order to limit their consequences.
It was first introduced in civil aviation in the aftermath of the Second World War and has since been applied to every flight with the unparalleled level of safety we know today, improving every day.
Safety Culture means better management of risks associated with human factors.
Why a Safety Culture in the medical field?
Like aviation, human anaesthesia is a high-risk field. Over the past 30 years, Safety Culture has emerged in this specialty with the introduction of concrete tools such as the WHO surgical safety checklist and the Anaesthetic Crisis Manual, and is the subject of specific training courses (ESAIC Patient Safety and Quality). The implementation of Safety Culture comes with a drastic reduction in risk in human anaesthesia.
Why SafeAnaesthesia.Vet?
Veterinary anaesthesia still carries a very high risk at the present time.
In a recent large-scale study, anaesthesia-related mortality in dogs was 0.69% (1/145) 1 and 0.63% (1/159) 2 in cats. Anaesthesia-related mortality in horses is 1% (0.6% for horses not suffering from colic, 3.4% for horses suffering from colic) 3. For dogs, cats and horses not suffering from colic, this represents roughly a 1,000 times higher risk than in human anaesthesia (0.00069%, or 1/145,000) 4.
In veterinary anaesthesia, dogs, cats and horses not suffering from colic incur an anaesthetic risk approximately 1,000 times higher than in human anaesthesia.
Although initiatives such as the AVA prerequisites and checklist (Guidelines for safer anaesthesia) exist, the Safety Culture is still not commonly applied in veterinary anaesthesia practice. However, implementing this culture increases the patient safety and quality of anaesthesia and gives teams greater peace of mind when performing anaesthesia.
Safety Culture means increased safety and peace of mind in veterinary anaesthesia.
This website aims to raise awareness and assist in the implementation of a Safety Culture in veterinary anaesthesia by offering, among other things, a practical tool in the form of an application that can be used during each anaesthesia procedure. Come and discover it!
This App will enable you to implement the Safety Culture within your veterinary clinic. It is inspired by what have been in place for over 70 years in aviation, where the effectiveness of Safety Culture is well established.