How the Blue Angels Made Debriefing a Habit

Four ways to review every clinic session as a team: check the work against a record, start with the leader, and leave with one fix.

Most clinic days end without anyone looking back. On a Mohs day, the afternoon runs late. The histotech thinks the slides backed up over lunch. The surgeon thinks the case order was off. The front desk heard patients asking why they were still waiting. Then the last patient leaves, everyone heads for the parking lot, and the next Mohs day runs late the same way. Nobody was careless. Nobody compared what was meant to happen with what did. A team gets better when it looks back at the work together, every time, and leaves with a fix. At their 1995 winter training in El Centro, the US Navy’s Blue Angels showed what that looks like.

The leader says: “I’ll start. My first turn came in late.”

A pilot says: “Then I’m next. I was wide on the same turn.”

The leader goes first. In the debrief Carroll watched, each pilot named their own errors, and the leader went first.

The leader says: “Freeze it there. See the gap?”

A pilot says: “That’s mine. I was a beat slow.”

The record settles it. The replay stops on small flaws most spectators would never notice.

The ground observer says: “From the ground, the join-up looked wide.”

A pilot says: “I’ll fix it on the next flight.”

Every point ends in a fix. Pilots and ground observers can both raise a flaw, and the pilot commits to fixing it.

In the winter of 1995, a reporter from AOPA Pilot magazine visited the Blue Angels at their winter training base in El Centro. The team flew two practice shows a day, on six days of each week. Each flight ended in a detailed debriefing, and then the same cycle repeated with the day’s second flight.¹

Every mistake was on the table. The reporter watched the pilots pick every flight apart, point by point, and talk openly about every error, with rank and ego set aside.¹ Lt. Ryan Scholl, the team’s narrator that year, told the magazine that no one held back. Pilots and ground observers alike could raise “safeties,” the team’s word for anything that fell short of the standard. By tradition, each speaker finished the same way: a promise to fix it, and a word that they were happy to be there.¹

The debrief worked from a record, not from memory. In 1995 the team’s observers recorded the practice shows on video for the pilots to study at the following debrief.¹ Writer Ward Carroll, who watched one show up close with the team, followed the pilots back to the ready room afterward. There the pilots called out their own errors from the show, and their leader, the Boss, went first. Then came the video, from the moment the pilots walked out to their jets, stopped again and again to pick apart small flaws in their timing. Most of what they caught, Carroll noted, an ordinary spectator would never notice.²

The routine is demanding, and its parts work together. At El Centro in 1995, two flights a day meant two debriefs a day, on smooth days as well as rough ones. Naming your own mistake in front of the people you fly with takes nerve, and so does watching tape of a flight that felt fine. Each part covers a gap in the others. The tape shows what really happened. The standard says what should have happened. In the debrief Carroll saw, the leader’s errors came first, so nobody else’s were the only ones on the table. And the promise to fix each point turns the whole conversation toward the next flight.

Principles of Excellence

• Every flight gets a debrief. At 1995 winter training in El Centro, a detailed debriefing followed each practice flight: two flights a day, on six days of each week.¹
• The record decides what happened. In 1995 the team’s observers videotaped practice shows for the debrief, and in Carroll’s account the replay was paused on flaws most spectators would miss.^{1, 2}
• The leader goes first. In the debrief Carroll watched, the pilots called out their own errors, and the Boss went first. The 1995 reporter saw mistakes discussed openly, whatever a pilot’s rank.^{1, 2}
• Everyone with a view speaks. Ground observers as well as pilots could raise “safeties,” and the team’s narrator said no one held back.¹
• Every point ends in a fix. In the 1995 narrator’s account, every speaker closed by promising to fix what had been raised.¹

4 Exceptional Practices for your Clinic

1. Debrief every session, not just the bad ones. At 1995 winter training in El Centro, the Blue Angels held a detailed debriefing after every practice flight, two a day, on six days of each week. When the review is routine, smooth days get studied too, and calling a debrief never signals that something went wrong. After every Mohs day, the Mohs surgeon leads a short debrief at the whiteboard and invites each role that worked the day to speak. The team chooses a time it can keep, and holds it on easy days as well as hard ones. If a patient is still in the clinic, a named nurse stays with them.
2. Put the plan beside a record. In 1995 the team’s observers videotaped practice flights for the debrief, and in Carroll’s account the replay was stopped on flaws most spectators would miss. A record settles what memory argues about, and it shows the small slips nobody noticed at the time. When a Mohs afternoon runs late, the histotech brings the day’s de-identified log of when each stage went to the lab and when the slides came back, listed by time slot and stage, with no names. The team lays it beside the planned schedule before anyone offers a theory.
3. Let the physician go first. After the one show Ward Carroll watched with the team, the pilots called out their own errors, and the Boss, their leader, went first. When the leader’s own decisions are reviewed first, the debrief is plainly about the work, not about who ranks highest. When the debrief opens after a Mohs day, the surgeon starts with one of her own decisions: “I’ll go first. I added a case at noon without telling the front desk, and that pushed the afternoon back.” Then she invites each role in turn to say what they saw from their station. If anything could have harmed a patient, file the clinic’s incident report as usual; the debrief can raise it but never replaces that report.
4. Hear from everyone who saw it, and leave with one fix. In 1995 the ground observers as well as the pilots could raise “safeties,” and every speaker ended with a promise to fix it. The person with the clearest view is not always the one in charge, and a fix with a name and a date is one the next debrief can check. At the debrief after a general dermatology clinic, the front desk lead says biopsy patients kept stopping at checkout to ask how they would get their results. The team writes one fix on the whiteboard with an owner and a date: the nurse gives each biopsy patient the clinic’s written results instructions before they leave, and the practice manager asks at the next debrief whether it happened.

Explore the Evidence Further