Chapter 44. Crew Resource Management and its Applications in Medicine

Patient care, like other technically complex and high risk fields, is an interdependent process carried out by teams of individuals with advanced technical training who have varying roles and decision-making responsibilities. While technical training assures proficiency at specific tasks, it does not address the potential for errors created by communicating and decision making in dynamic environments. Experts in aviation have developed safety training focused on effective team management, known as Crew Resource Management (CRM). Improvements in the safety record of commercial aviation may be due, in part, to this training. Over the past 10 years, lessons from aviation’s approach to team training have been applied to patient safety, notably in intensive care unit (ICU) and anesthesia training. This chapter reviews the literature on Crew Resource Management, also known as Cockpit Resource Management, and describes adaptations of this training framework to medicine.