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Fri May 8 18:39:41 BST 2009

I'm sorry that you feel aggrieved at the comparison, and I applaud you 
for coming to the defense of "The Profession", although I feel it 
unnecessary.

But if I may make a few points:

Nobody was comparing Doctors and Pilots. It's like comparing Salad with 
the Alphabet. It's a non-comparison.

There are plenty of references to the Airline Industry because we as a 
group are paying more attention to Safety, which has always been 
championed by said Industry. And not by us.

One of the issues that we are adressing now is Human Factors and 
Limitations. And if there is research done in that field already, then 
it makes perfect sense to refer to it instead of trying to reinvent the 
wheel.

So go ahead, hurl as much abuse at me as you possibly can, because I can 
take it. But if there is knowledge to be pooled from the Airline 
Industry that we can apply to our own practice then it would be arrogant 
and stupid to dismiss it simply because it doesn't fit in with some 
people's ideal of greatness for "The Profession".

André de Castro Carneiro
Specialist Registrar
Anaesthetics and Critical Care
The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

Doc Holiday wrote:
> The next person I hear comparing doctors and pilots will be the subject of much abuse. I've had enough. There are a few similarities between the two professions, but there are many major points which simply do not match. Here is how I see it:
> 
>  
> - Pilots do indeed endeavour to get one from A to B but, unlike doctors, they never have to do so when one presents already in a spiralling dive downwards towards Z, which began without prior warning.
> 
>  
> - Passengers may only board their plane if they arrive for a flight well before it takes off. Patients, on the other hand, often first meet their doctor when they are already some way on their clinical journey to obstructed-airway-land or peritoneal-abscess-airport...
> 
>  
> - Pilots and their airlines may well be relied upon to get MOST of you to your destination, but often some "organs" will be missing (i.e. your luggage) and there are many layers of protection in the way to guarantee that the pilots will be spared any involvement in the resulting aftermath. They will not even be personally informed that some of your stuff has gone missing, perhaps forever. And it seems that the compensation you get for missing luggage is limited rather more strictly than what you could expect should a surgeon "misplace" an organ...
> 
>  
> - Pilots receive their “patients” on the planned day of travel. These patients will have been screened and vetted by many resources (security, visa check, etc.) but to the ED patients present "as is".
>  
> - When things begin to go wrong for pilots, they have a couple of colleagues seated with them, ready to assist and support them. And, even thus assisted, when things still go wrong, they may well end up losing significantly more than one patient...
> 
>  
> - Isn't it nice for pilots that they only have to fly one plane at a time, unlike, say, an EP or surgical intensivist who often has more than one patient on the go at one time, perhaps in different wards.
> 
>  
> - Take a GP/FP. He/she must "pilot" the patient through many little crashes, until the inevitable final one. There is no mechanism whereby “defective” patients can be replaced by newer models to facilitate easier piloting...
> 
>  
> - Finally, the actual proof that even pilots know the real truth of this ridiculous comparison: How often do doctors find themselves taking care of pilots with their chest pains, headaches, etc.? Pilots always see doctors when they need medical assistance. They know whom they can trust! There is no-one but us. But doctors can travel on trains, buses, ships...
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Doctors vs. Pilots