[7] Formal AAR meetings are normally run by a facilitator or trained 'AAR Conductor', and can be chronological reviews or tightly focused on a few key issues selected by the team leader.
[7] In the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS), AAR is increasingly used as a learning tool to promote patient safety[8] and improve care, as outlined by Walker et al.
In 2008, a group of senior leaders within University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust acted on the realization that bullying and blaming behaviours were impacting on safe and effective care.
In 2011, Professor Aidan Hallighan, UCLH's Director of Education, wrote "Healthcare is dominated by the extreme, the unknown and the very improbable with high impact consequences, conditions that demand leadership, and yet we spend our time focusing on what we know and what we can control.
Prerequisite to the success of a formal AAR are a few key ingredients, including a trained ‘conductor’, a suitable safe private environment, allocated time and the assumption of equality of everybody present.