Surgical team collaborates with McLaren F1 to improve processes
On the screen was a motor racing grand prix and, as they watched, the two men became aware of the similarities between the handover disciplines from theatre to intensive care and what they were seeing in the pit of a Formula One racing team. From that moment began a collaboration between the leaders of Great Ormond Street’s surgical and intensive care units, first with the McLaren F1 racing team and then with Ferrari’s team chief Jan Todt, technical guru Ross Brawn and, in particular, race technical director Nigel Stepney. They worked together at their home base in Modena, Italy, in the pits of the British Grand Prix and in the Great Ormond Street theatre and intensive care ward. The major restructuring of the patient handover procedure, resulting directly from the input of the F1 pit technicians, will soon be described in two scientific publications. “It is not too early to say that, when we look at the number of critical instances we encounter, they have reduced markedly since we introduced the modified training protocol developed from what we have learned from Formula 1,” said Prof Elliott. The single A4 sheet of paper, which contained the flow diagram of Ferrari’s pit procedure, became several pages of twice that size when Mr Stepney and his colleagues at Ferrari were confronted with the critical transfer from operating theatre to recovery room at Great Ormond Street.
(tags: collaboration cross-discipline surgery formula-1 mclaren pitstops cardiac)