Personality clashes between surgeons, doctors and nurses are putting patients at risk in the operating theatre, England's leading surgeon will warn today.

Bernard Ribeiro, president of the Royal College of Surgeons in England, will tell a London conference today that a sustained effort is needed to educate hospital staff as teams to prevent medical errors and avoid unnecessary deaths in hospitals.

Pressure is mounting on hospital staff to cut the number of mistakes made during routine surgeries. Earlier this week Liam Donaldson, chief medical officer, warned that the risk of dying in hospital as a result of medical errors was one in 300, making it more dangerous to go into hospital than to fly.

Mr Ribeiro will say: "Professional failures are more often due to behavioural difficulties, personal conflict, lack of insight, systems failure or defective infrastructure than technical failings or lack of knowledge. Accidents are rarely caused by a single individual. They are more often the result of a sequence of avoidable errors or organisational defects."

Today's conference, looking at how other high-risk industries have improved safety through training, will hear that surgical practices and attitudes have undergone a major overhaul since the Bristol inquiry into the deaths of infants undergoing cardiac treatment, but that there are still significant improvements to be made.

The conference will aim to set out a way forward to tackle sub-standard management in hospitals and avoid accidents. Mr Ribeiro will say that since the report on the Bristol child deaths work has been done to set up patient groups and monitor surgeons' work. "We have gone a long way to burying the old-fashioned image of an authoritarian surgeon. I hope we can reassure the public that today's surgeons listen to their patients and understand that they must communicate clearly."

But there were still "human factors" in how teams worked together that could be improved, he will say.

"All too often, we have found the problems relate to personality clashes or lack of insight causing a dysfunctional unit, rather than underperformance or lack of technical skills in the operating theatre or outpatient clinic."

The college is planning new programmes to deal with this.

Representatives of other high risk, high stress professions will make presentations on how they have reformed management training to prevent egos getting in the way of teamwork.