This paper investigates comparisons between the behavioural causes of traffic accidents and medical accidents. Both are liable to human error but more intrinsic difficulty is found in the medical situation. Accidents can be studied as individual events or as rates. Rates of death and injury from medical and traffic accidents vary: both types of accident are common but the rate of death or injury is greater for medical incidents. Behavioural causes are examined. In traffic accidents these include age and experience, alcohol consumption and environmental factors such as weather conditions. In medical accidents, experience also played a large part, and other factors included medical problems in doctors. Accounting for risk exposure has been attempted in traffic accident research but not in the medical field. Medical accident research could benefit from considering individual variability in liability, and traffic accident research from greater use of detailed analysis. For the covering abstract see ITRD E116025.
Samenvatting