New Arctic Air Crash Aftermath Role-Play Simulation™: Orchestrating a Fundamental Surprise

We describe an aviation scenario-based role-play simulation used to teach healthcare practitioners about barriers to learning from accidents. Participants searched for the causes of the crash in a scenario that encouraged a “garden path” explanation that the root cause was a risky decision to take o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting
Main Authors: Patterson, Emily S., Woods, David D., Cook, Richard I., Render, Marta L.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publications 2001
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/154193120104500422
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/154193120104500422
Description
Summary:We describe an aviation scenario-based role-play simulation used to teach healthcare practitioners about barriers to learning from accidents. Participants searched for the causes of the crash in a scenario that encouraged a “garden path” explanation that the root cause was a risky decision to take off despite visible ice on the wings. During a debriefing session, the actual structure of how the system failed is revealed, including over 100 active and latent contributors to the failure with a multitude of potential lessons to improve safety. The dissonance between lessons learned during the role-play and the potential lessons creates a “fundamental surprise” situation that allows oversimplified assumptions of how complex systems fail to be challenged.