Learn to use human factors to improve safety in health care

The primary aim is to provide staff with an understanding of the principles and application of human factors and how it can be used to improve safety in healthcare. 

This guide will:

• provide a comprehensive overview of human factors;
• support healthcare workers to identify the human factors issues in their workplace;
• support the identification of the human factors contributors to incidents; and
• provide examples of human factors interventions that have been used in health care settings.

Part one of the guide comprises nine chapters that describe specific aspects of the interaction between humans and the healthcare system, and the potential to use this lens to design safer processes, systems and work environments. 

Part two considers the application of human factors to healthcare and includes a chapter on incident review and a chapter that presents examples of human factor interventions.

The guide outlines how human factors also has much to offer to the areas of quality improvement and efficiency including:

• Safety improvement – a human factors approach can support our understanding of the contributors to incidents at all levels of the healthcare system, as well as how to proactively improve safety through mitigation
• Quality improvement – a human factors approach can support improvements in quality of care, work practices, and workforce satisfaction
• Increased efficiency – a human factors approach can support an improved understanding of how work processes and systems can be designed in order to optimise performance, productivity, and cost effectiveness

This guide is for any organisation or individual working across health and social care who wants to understand more about the field of human factors and how it can positively impact health care organisations.

It provides information about a wide range of theories, measures, and approaches that can improve the safety, quality and efficiency of workplaces.

As this guide is written for all health care settings (primary, secondary, community, and pre-hospital care), it is not focused on any one particular domain of health care.

This guide was developed by the Health and Safety Executive in Ireland (HSE), who wanted to explore how to apply the principles and practices of human factors in health care settings. The aim of the project was to make human factors accessible to all heatlh care staff in their everyday work.