Human Error…how do we account for it?

Human error is blamed on a vast major­ity of the mis­takes that are made. In 1989 when the Exxon Valdez spilled 10.8 mil­lion gal­lons of oil in Alaska the cause: human error. In 1986 the Chernobyl Nuclear power plant acci­dent in Ukraine that led to many radi­a­tion related deaths was said to be caused by human error. In hos­pi­tals many peo­ple die from receiv­ing the wrong med­ica­tions or even the wrong dosages of the right med­ica­tion. In a mar­riage, one or both part­ners step out­side their mar­riage and have rela­tion­ships with other peo­ple. The demise of the mar­riage can also be attrib­uted to human error. Human error per­me­ates vir­tu­ally every aspect of our lives. So if we are sur­rounded by human errors how do we com­pen­sate for them?

As peo­ple we are always going to make mis­takes. It’s sim­ply part of our makeup. But, the mis­takes com­mon to humans is not the issue. It is grave errors that lead to loss of life or rela­tion­ships. Permanent dam­age.
We can com­pen­sate for these errors by try­ing to be the most con­sci­en­tious in what we do. Although while not aim­ing for per­fec­tion being con­scious of how what you do effects oth­ers will help us to take nec­es­sary mea­sures to pre­vent mis­takes.

• In our rela­tion­ships do we do our best in respect­ing the bound­aries set by our friends, fam­ily or mates?
• Do we avoid sit­u­a­tions such as close rela­tion­ships with peo­ple we are not mar­ried to so that we can pre­vent a result­ing human error?
• In our work are we care­ful not to make poor judg­ments that could result in human error?

The rea­son we need to ask our­selves these ques­tions is because we can not blame human errors on oth­ers. Human error is not a col­lec­tive term. It is ulti­mately our sin­gu­lar respon­si­bil­ity to pre­vent human errors.

So will we?

Thanks for read­ing,