Patient Safety Secrets We Can Discover by Looking at Formula 1 Racing

I have spent the better part of my 40-year career in healthcare working to improve patient safety.?

When I first started as a nurse, I made a medication error that caused my patient a temporary injury.? I was so scared and didn’t have any knowledge of how medication errors happened, I never told a soul what happened.?

Nearly 10 years later; I was leading a medication safety team for one of the biggest health systems in the nation and I had the aha moment that it wasn’t my fault.? I wasn’t a bad person or even a bad nurse for making the error.? What a relief!

So, you are probably asking what this has to do with F1 racing.? Great question!

I had the privilege to attend the year end final Formula 1 race two years in a row and it started my love affair with Formula 1 racing.?

This week because it is National Patient Safety Awareness Week, and the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix race just happened, I was getting loads of text messages from friends about both events.

I started to think about just how similar I see Patient Safety and Formula 1 racing.

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??? Formula 1 is a team sport.? There are two primary drivers for each racing team that drive during the race.? Each race weekend consists of the qualifying races and the actual Grand Prix race.? The rest of the time, the entire team, including the drivers, is working on self-care, developing a faster and more efficient car, and perfecting the strategy that will ultimately win the most races.?

??Patient Safety is a team sport too.? We need everyone on our team, not just the doctors or the nurses, to be preoccupied with failure in such a way that the team recognizes the inherent risks in the work.? Our shifts and patients may come in spurts, but we need to be on top of our game at all times.

??? Formula 1 cars are built with multiple functions that protect the driver.? They have feedback loops and redundancies that if one thing on the car fails, there are other systems in place to get the car back to the pit for maintenance.? And should the car crash, Heaven forbid, the car is built to protect the driver from injury.

??Patient safety needs to have engineering solutions to engineering problems.? Much of what we face in patient care every day involves poorly designed systems that don’t match our workflows and don’t serve to enhance our performance or protect our caregivers or patients.? We continue to seek solutions through the lens of a caregiver and that might not provide us with the best possible solutions.?

??? During a race, the entire team not just the driver, is absolutely on point for the entire race.? The team is monitoring every move of the car, the driver, the weather, the track, the other cars, the other drivers, the wind, and any other thing that could possibly impact the outcome of the race.? There is constant communication with the team and the driver.? Everyone is checking on each other and checking with the driver providing continuous feedback about the speed, the distance between drivers, the number of laps remaining, and other pertinent information to ensure the best outcome possible.

??Patient care days tend to be long for most of us.? The work is demanding and stressful.? It is mentally challenging to keep focused on the work every minute of the day.? We often work in silos without any feed back on what is happening on our unit, in other units that might impact us, with other patients that might need our attention.? We don’t consider how the distractions of what is happening around us can impact our own ability to focus.? We don’t accept or receive feedback for the sake of our improvement freely.?

???When a Formula 1 car crashes, they don’t blame the driver.? They immediately start to dissect the crash, looking at what other cars and drivers might have been involved, how the weather or track conditions might have affected the crash, when was the last time the car pitted for minor maintenance, and what other information do they know that could be helpful in determining the cause of the crash and how to prevent it for the next race.? Usually there is only a week or two between races so time is of the essence to fix the problems and rebuild the car.

??Patient safety event investigations still tend to start with the age-old question, “who’s fault is it?”?? We talk about systems, processes, Just Culture, psychological safety, and we have multiple models for determining “cause”.? We seem to miss the need for data collection leading up to, during and immediately after the event.? We need the entire team to tell us what they know about their piece of the puzzle.? We need to objectively figure out how the event happened and what we can do quickly to make sure the next patient won’t experience the same thing.?

???Lastly, the past season of Formula 1 saw some major changes in the Team Principles for some of the biggest teams.? The fact is, the Team Principles drive the team culture, and the team culture drives the team’s success.? If drivers are racing against each other or crew members are withholding critical information, the race will surely end in a failure and may even result in the death of a driver.? At the least it could result in the loss of a very expensive car.? ?

I am not suggesting we replace our leaders, but we do need to acknowledge the importance of strong, capable, compassionate leaders who build a culture that supports safe patient care.? Although we want every member of our team to have patient safety at the front of their mind, this will only happen when we have leaders that make sure they have the knowledge, equipment, systems, support, and leadership to provide the best care possible in the safest environment.

Formula 1 will still have cars that crash, just like we will have patient safety failures.? My wish for both is that we continue to learn, we do our best to protect the drivers and our patients from harm, and we create a safe, fulfilling environment for our teams to work successfully together.