System Reliability and Airway Management
Research type
Research Study
Full title
System Reliability and Airway Management
IRAS ID
158873
Contact name
Iain Moppett
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Nottingam
Research summary
Airway management is a routine process, fundamental to safe anaesthesia and emergency care. Previous work has shown that it is imperfectly reliable in routine and non-routine settings. Minor process errors are very common, catastrophic failures are unusual but devastating. There are sophisticated engineering tools available to allow formal analysis of complex processes, but these have not previously been applied to airway management. A crucial component of such models is understanding of when, how and why decisions are made.
We wish to undertake an observational study to collect data on actions and decisions involved in routine and complicated airway management. This will involve detailed analysis of video recordings of clinical anaesthesia and formal structured probing of recalled complicated airway events by human factors and risk and reliability engineers. We anticipate producing a robust, testable model of airway management, which can then be used as a tool to examine formally the limitations, resource needs and failure modes of current and potential future practice. Such a model may allow testing of the content of emergency drills; this currently relies largely on expert opinion and limited testing in simulated or real scenarios.
REC name
London - Surrey Borders Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/LO/1239
Date of REC Opinion
28 Jul 2014
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion