So what are human factors?
This short video, for frontline staff, will provide you with an overview of human factors
and why they are relevant to us in healthcare.
Have a think? have you ever done something wrong because of bad design? For example,
have you ever walked into a door thinking it was a push when it turned out to be a pull door?
What about this design? what are the odds of you picking the wrong medication rather
than the right medication? Based on the design of those ampoules.
These are just a few examples of the huge science that is human factors and ergonomics
and this video seeks to: define human factors and ergonomics; describe there role in healthcare;
and then by the end you will hopefully appreciate their influence on your performance as an
individual, team and system level.
Human factors is science the understanding of what affects our performance and behaviour in the
workplace and allows us to better understand how we work both mentally and physically,
and how we design our work environments and systems to maximise patient care, safety and staff wellbeing.
Human beings are fantastic; our brains are incredible at being able to make sense of
complex situations and multitasking. We are constantly jumping from one task, to idea,
to action, to another, you can understand why we can feel so tired at the end of a shift
if we have been juggling multiple tasks.
but of course that also means we sometimes miss something
or drop something.
And what about when we are ill or feeling under the weather? We understand that cognitive
functions can be impaired and we may need extra support for everyday decisions and tasks
that we would not normally need.
What about the world around us? Understanding our strengths and weaknesses as a human and
how we receive and process information allows us to better design equipment, tools, software,
and physical environments.
Take this example, when we read our brain makes associations between the order of letters
in a word and this allows us to read quickly without having to read every letter. But that
can of course cause problems; what about these examples? How about now? Is that a bit better?
Medication labels and the re-design aims to try to address this risk with tactfully placed
capital letters.
Human factors is about the user and is about understanding how we are affected by the tools,
tasks and environment that we work in and the culture of our teams and organisations.
It takes that understanding to create solutions to make our life easier and better; it also
allows you to understand that if you change one part of the system somewhere it may well
have effects on the system as a whole or unexpected effects on other parts of the system.
We are briefly going to focus on three areas of human factors: the individual, the team
and the wider system.
Let's start with the individual; you have limitations and if your limitations are exceeded
then you're at risk of committing an error or not identifying something when it has gone
wrong. It is difficult to identify when we have reached our limit; a great analogy for
this is the idea of your buckets and the three buckets model. Each of us has three metaphorical
buckets and the fuller our buckets are the more likely we are to commit an error.
We have a self bucket which relates to us as an individual our expertise, knowledge
and skills, and how much capacity we have? We have a context bucket, that is the context
within which are working: what is the organisation like, have we got support, what equipment
do we use, what is the environment like? We also have a task bucket. In healthcare
we are very task focused; we undertake lots of tasks. Some of these are more error prone,
some are more complex, some require multitasking and some of course are new to us.
We can use this idea to understand how full our buckets are, remembering that the fuller
they are the more likely we are to commit an error and therefore the more likely we
are to need help.
Then you have your team. Healthcare is team focused, we work as part of multiple teams
and a good team is a team that has clear leadership, good communication, good support of each other
and has an overall awareness of everything that is going on in the situation. Leadership
is about ensuring that the team is working towards a common goal, making sure that you
incorporate important processes such as briefings, huddles and debriefing. It�s a leader�s
role to ensure that the team stays on the same page, always monitoring the situation
by pulling that information together to make sure that everybody is aware of everything
that is going on. In a team we must communicate, we must share information using closed loop
communication ensuring that somebody has understood your message and undertake the task given
to them. We must also look after each other; we must support each other identifying when
a colleague is struggling, but also being open to receiving support. We must speak up
should we think that there is anything that is threatening safety or quality of care to
a patient.
Finally we have the system; this is the world around us. We work in incredibly complex systems
and it is constantly changing depending on who is working with what patients. We and
the system must develop resilience to adapt to the changing world around us. Have a look
at your system around you, who is in your world? What are you actually doing? What are
the patients like? What equipment are you working with? How is the environment set up?
What protocols, policies and guidelines do you follow? All of this together will either
support or hinder your performance and therefore it is incredibly important that you recognise
those factors that might make your life more difficult and do something about them, whether
that is raising the concern, reporting a concern or identifying the risk.
If there is something that worries you, speak up, do something about it.
There we have it, that is human factors and ergonomics. There is loads of work going on
around NUH related to this subject. To find out more please access the various resources
on the screen in front of you. The patient safety team will be more than happy to advise;
the Trent Simulation Centre have expertise in human factors and are developing a Trust-wide
team training programme called NUH TEAMS- find out more via the links in front of you.
Thank you very much for listening