Sir Richard recently gave an interview to the BBC  when he said, amongst other things, that the healthcare industry could learn from the airline industry; and that all healthcare workers should be screened for MRSA and treated for it because it “is far better than having people dying from unnecessary diseases, and all the misery and pain that that causes, and the cost to the NHS which is enormous.”

Sir Richard is now vice-chair of the Patients Association. If he wanted to go and talk to the scientists who actually do know about MRSA then he would find out all kinds of things; for example, in many outbreaks of MRSA, staff strains are different from those that patients are colonised by. And that MRSA is on places that may not routinely get cleaned; and that it is a bit daft to be so concerned about cleaning bedposts if there is only one commode being shared by a whole ward. Now, if Sir Richard was proposing research to find out what the most cost-effective ways are of reducing MRSA (and other hospital aquired pathogens) transmission and disease resulting from it are, I would be entirely supportive. But presuming that one knows the answers when it is clear that this is a complex area where randomised controlled trials are few – is dangerous.

As for the airline/healthcare analogy, well…

If a pilot thinks it’s unsafe to fly due to risk factors, for example poor weather, then they don’t. They stay, rightly, grounded. If a doctor thinks that surgery will be high risk, they don’t always have the choice of staying ‘grounded’ and not operating: the illness may well be the reason why the operation needs to be done. In other words, the airline industry has much more choice about the risks it is prepared to take on.

And. Airlines fly routes that are profitable and readily possible. Healthcare has to deal with things that may be neither. Neither can the identification of ‘near misses’ in air travel be used as a reason to compare it with safety in healthcare – in any case there seems to be justified concern that pilots don’t always ‘fess up.

This isn’t to diminish the huge responsibility which airline pilots take on and have. Aviaton and healthcare systems may have some similarities but they are limited. Here is one comparision it might be worth making. A pilot has a co-pilot and a standard number of crew without whom he cannot fly. The healthcare vogue is for promoting less qualified team members to diagnose and treat conditions. This is analogous to the pilot remaining at the airport but taking responsibility for the cabin crew flying the aircraft and dealing with any problems. It may be cheaper to do so but it isn’t necessarily desirable or effective. This is something which competitors to NHS primary healthcare may wish to note.