BBASS is delighted to welcome an esteemed colleague who changed career - Captain Niall Downey. We will be exploring the parallels of training to be a surgeon and a pilot. We will explore the importance of situational awareness and crew resource management. Pilots have to accredit on simulators on a regular basis but surgeons do not. We will compare and contrast the careers of a surgeon an pilot.

Niall qualified as a doctor from Trinity College, Dublin in 1993. He trained as a surgeon in Belfast and received his FRCSI in 1997. He was a trainee in cardio-thoracic surgery working as an SHO in the Royal Victoria Hospital before returning to Dublin where he worked as a registrar in the National Cardiac Surgery Unit.

He subsequently retrained as an airline pilot with Aer Lingus in 1999 and combined aviation with medicine by working as an Accident & Emergency doctor for six years before focusing fully on aviation. After operating as a co-pilot on both the European and Trans-Atlantic fleets, he qualified as a captain in 2010. He is currently operating out of their Dublin base on the Airbus A330 Trans-Atlantic fleet and will shortly be transferring to their Manchester base.

In 2011, he formed Frameworkhealth Ltd, a company providing aviation-style safety training modified specifically for healthcare which draws on his thirty-five years of experience between both industries. This project aims to share aviation’s Safety Management System with healthcare in order to address the huge issue of Adverse Events, usually caused by systemic faults but often blamed on the last individual to have touched the ball. Niall aims to encourage healthcare to adopt a Just Culture, embed a systemic Human Factors approach and empower patients and their families to speak up as part of the crew.

Niall has been a regular speaker at conferences on both the national and international stage. His TEDx talk from 2016 outlines his message and his first book, ‘Oops! Why Things Go Wrong’ is due for release in May and will be available for pre-order soon.

Summary

This live, on-demand teaching session will cover the foundational skills and knowledge needed to become a successful medical professional. Discussion topics will range from medical ethics to team-building, communication, and managing difficult patients. Each participant will be able to interact directly with an experienced captain to gain hands-on training, as well as receive valuable tools and resources to help them achieve their professional goals. Don’t miss this chance to have an experienced mentor help you build the skills and knowledge to make an impact on the medical field.

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Learning objectives

Learning Objectives:

Understand the importance of situational awareness and crew resource management in the medical field.
Understand and compare the training involved in becoming a surgeon and a pilot.
Appreciate the safety management system used in the aviation industry and the possibility of adapting it in the medical field.
Identify the huge issue of Adverse Events and how they can be addressed in healthcare.
Analyze the importance of a Just Culture and how it can empower patients and their families.

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