Airport

There is often a comparison between the airline industry and the operating room environment in terms of culture of safety, teamwork required, and process management. As I find myself making this analogy for patients in the pre-operative area, I realize it's more and more apt. There's a certain behind-the-scenes mayhem that occurs daily in airports and operating rooms. There is a rush to get all the surgeries going and all the planes into the air, often around the same time. If one case or flight gets delayed, it affects the subsequent schedules. Each instance involves more than the pilot and passenger or surgeon and patient; the right equipment and staff need to be available. Length of flight or duration of procedure is important as well as destination; if a plane bound for San Francisco takes off, there had better be a gate available on the other end, and in the same way, if a surgery starts, there needs to be an appropriate bed available for the patient post-operatively. I suppose big service industries based on throughput must have similar structures.

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