I bring you a weekly bite-sized chunk of the science behind helicopter human factors and CRM in practice, simplifying the complex and distilling a helicopter related study into a summary of less than 500 words.
TITLE:
Crew Resource Management: What aviation can learn from the application of CRM in other domains.
WHAT?
Review of how CRM has been implemented in healthcare, military, and maritime industries, comparing their training methods and evaluation practices with those in aviation. It aims to identify opportunities for aviation to strengthen CRM training by learning from these other high-risk sectors.
WHERE?
Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central Florida.
WHEN?
Covers CRM development from 1999 to 2014 and was presented in 2015.
WHY?
Although aviation pioneered CRM and remains its primary reference point, other sectors have adapted and advanced CRM in ways that could be useful for aviation. With CRM central to safety and team coordination, understanding how other industries deliver and assess CRM can help us in aviation refine our own methods.
HOW?
A structured literature review of peer-reviewed articles, technical reports, and regulatory guidance. Each was categorised by industry, training technique, assessment approach, and CRM history. Information from non-aviation domains was compared against contemporary aviation CRM practices to highlight similarities and potential lessons.
FINDINGS:
- Aviation mostly evaluates CRM training effectiveness using only the first two levels of Kirkpatrick’s model for evaluating training. Level 1 measuresreactions (i.e. participants’ perceptions of training) and Level 2 – learning (knowledge gained). The higher levels – Level 3 (whether training leads to behavioural change on the job) and Level 4 – results (measuring operational outcomes of training, e.g. reduced errors/incidents or improved safety) are rarely assessed in a systematic way. Levels 3 & 4 are much more difficult to evaluate in terms of both methodology and cost.
- Healthcare frequently uses integrated, team-based simulation that brings together multidisciplinary professionals, mirroring operational environments. Healthcare workers also express a strong preference for such inter-professional training. Training is delivered in a more modular, piecemeal way to overcome shift-work constraints, offering flexible and self-scheduled training that aviation crews might similarly benefit from.
- The military inherits many CRM concepts from aviation but has established highly structured systems for training and evaluation. More programmes are in place to measure effectiveness across all four levels of the training-evaluation model, including ongoing behavioural observation and attempts to track error reduction. This probably reflects the fact they are better resourced.
- Within the maritime industry, CRM has evolved into Maritime Resource Management and has become standardised and mandatory under international regulation. Standardisation extends to course content, delivery methods, and trainer qualifications—an area where aviation remains more flexible but also less uniform.
SO WHAT?
The review suggests that aviation could flexibly enhance CRM training by adopting more integrated and multidisciplinary training sessions (such as inviting in external experts and specialists to extend and strengthen training); embracing more novel or modular formats to suit variable schedules, and applying more comprehensive and standardised assessment methods similar to those in the military and maritime sectors. Further progress depends on improving the measurement of behavioural change and organisational outcomes, ensuring that CRM’s influence on operational safety is better understood and continually strengthened.
REFERENCE:
Jimenez, C., Kasper, K., Rivera, J., Talone, A. B., & Jentsch, F. (2016). Crew resource management: What aviation can learn from the application of CRM in other domains. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 59th Annual Meeting, 946–950. https://doi.org/10.1177/1541931215591274
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