ABSTRACT
The concept of safety as an underlying fundamental goal that serves to unify team members’ motivations and behaviours is stressed as a fundamental principle of crew management. Crew resource management (CRM), or non-technical skills programmes, involve the process of describing the behaviours of highly competent, safe individuals. The visible behaviours resulting from deep-seated fractures within the team structure can be more egregious: insults, disrespect or open hostility. Behavioural markers will be the key to those programmes, and improved team culture will be the fertile ground on which they will take root. CRM started as a means of training better cockpit leadership skills, but soon became integrated with human factors training in general–a more comprehensive training movement that dealt with the risks posed by the ways humans operate in complex settings. A number of individuals began looking at developing CRM, or non-technical skills training programs for healthcare in the 1990s.
