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Showing results for tags 'Ergonomics'.
Found 139 results
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Content ArticleThis webinar was organised by the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics & Human Factors (CIEHF) in partnership with the Israel Human Factors and Ergonomics Association (IHFEA). It looks at the impact of human factors in the design and use of a range of medical devices. Experts from Israel, the Netherlands and the UK share their insights about the challenges involved and how they were overcome. In her talk, Avital Zik shares examples from her experience in leading the human factors work of the Medtronic Lung Navigation system. Lung cancer care is currently invasive, ineffective, inefficient, difficult for users and often comes too late. Avital's team is on a mission is to transform the future of lung care.
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Content Article
This guidance on implementing human factors in anaesthesia has been produced by the Difficult Airway Society and the Association of Anaesthetists. Human factors is an evidence-based scientific discipline used in safety critical industries to improve safety and worker wellbeing; implementing human factors strategies in anaesthesia has the potential to reduce the reliance on exceptional personal and team performance to provide safe and high-quality patient care. A three-stage Delphi process was used to formulate a set of 12 recommendations: these are described using a ‘hierarchy of controls’ model and classified into design, barriers, mitigations and education and training strategies. -
Content ArticleMusculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are one of the main causes of ill health in the workplace, leaving many employees with painful long-term injuries. Health and social care are industries with a particularly high incidence of MSDs among staff. This infographic by the Chartered Institute for Ergonomics and Human Factors (CIEHF) lists the warning signs to be aware of and gives lots of easy-to-follow practical advice on how to prevent or reduce the risk of developing symptoms. There’s also a link to find exercises that could help prevent injuries occurring.
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Content ArticleThis study in Plos One used a prospective error analysis method—the Systematic Human Error Reduction and Prediction Approach (SHERPA)—to examine the process of dispensing medication in community pharmacy settings and identify solutions to avoid potential errors. These solutions were categorised as strong, intermediate or weak based on an established patient safety action hierarchy tool. The authors identified 88 potential errors with a total of 35 remedial solutions proposed to avoid these errors in practice. Sixteen (46%) of these remedial measures were categorised as weak, 14 (40%) as intermediate and 5 (14%) as strong according to the Veteran Affairs National Centre for Patient Safety action hierarchy. The authors suggest that future research should examine the effectiveness of the proposed remedial solutions to improve patient safety.
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Content ArticleHuman factors engineering or ergonomics (HFE) is a scientific discipline broadly focused on interactions among humans and other elements of a system. This article explores how HFE can be used to improve patient safety, in particular using the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) model, which depicts key characteristics and interactions between three core components: work system process outcomes
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Content ArticleThis blog is part of a series in which Steven Shorrock, an interdisciplinary humanistic, systems and design practitioner, outlines seven ‘archetypes of human work’. This blog looks specifically at 'The Messy Reality' archetype, which is characterised by adjustments, adaptations, variations, trade-offs, compromises and workarounds that are hard to prescribe and hard to identify, but that can become accepted and unremarkable for insiders. Steven examines what 'The Messy Reality' is, why it exists and highlights some examples from the aviation and healthcare industries.
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Content ArticleThis webinar hosted by the National Orthopaedic Alliance (NOA) gives a brief overview of human factors and ergonomics, its relevance and role in improving patient safety, how it has been embedded in one organisation and the impact it has had. Fran Ives, Human Factors Specialist and part of the Human Factors team at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Hospital (RJAH) speaks about her experience of applying Human Factors both within a large NHS Trust and an Academic Health Science Network, including the successes and challenges of setting up and developing a service, and what difference such a service can make.
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Content ArticleThe Patient Safety Database (PSD), previously called the Anesthesia Safety Network, is committed in the delivery of better perioperative care. Its primary goal is to make visible the lack of reliability of healthcare and the absolute necessity to build a new system for improving patient safety. This year, PSD has also been involved in the development of the SafeTeam Academy, an e-learning training platform associated with the Patient Safety Database, which offers video immersive courses using the power of cinema to train healthcare professionals. This is the latest newsletter from PSD, featuring a wide range of content by safety experts across Europe.
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This is part of our series of Patient Safety Spotlight interviews, where we talk to people working for patient safety about their role and what motivates them. Tracey talks to us about the role of NHS Supply Chain in ensuring the products procured through the NHS Supply are of high quality and are safe for healthcare organisations to use. She also highlights the vital importance of complaints and the need for staff who don’t work in direct care delivery to recognise their role in patient safety. -
Content ArticleSteven Shorrock is an interdisciplinary humanistic, systems and design practitioner interested in human work from multiple perspectives. In this blog, he reflects on what he has learned from 25 years as a human factors expert, highlighting that human factors is essentially about improving work, via design.
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Content ArticleThis download is the second of three chapters of a book which complements the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors' Healthcare Learning Pathway and is intended as a practical resource for students.
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Content ArticleReliable patient identification is essential for safe care, but system factors such as working conditions, technology, organisational barriers and inadequate communications protocols can interfere with identification. This study in the Journal of Patient Safety aimed to explore systems factors contributing to patient identification errors during intrahospital transfers. The authors observed 60 patient transfer handovers and found that patient identification was not conducted correctly in any of them (according to the hospital policy at every step of the process). The principal system factor responsible was organisational failure, followed by technology and team culture issues. The authors highlight a disconnect between the policy and the reality of the workplace, which left staff and patients in the study vulnerable to the consequences of misidentification.
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Content ArticleCommunity Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) can relieve pressure on NHS acute services and bring diagnostic services closer to patients. This resource by the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics & Human Factors (CIEHF) explores ten principles for including systems thinking in the design of the diagnostic workforce and CDC services.
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Content ArticleIn this analysis, published by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, the authors look at the impact of double checking medication to reduce errors and improve patient safety.
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Patient Safety Now: safety II and maternity (September 2022)
Patient-Safety-Learning posted an article in Maternity
Safety II moves away from simply looking at what went wrong, and aims to understand the realities of everyday work in a constructive and positive way. It focuses on the system as a whole, rather than the end result of the work done. In this blog, Professor Suzette Woodward, Professional and Clinical Advisor in Patient Safety, looks at the role of the Safety II approach in making maternity services safer. She outlines the importance of asking and listening to staff about how to reduce complexity and reform areas of the system that are prone to error. -
Content ArticleThis worksheet produced by NHS Education for Scotland is designed to be used by healthcare teams as a prompt to highlight the various system-wide factors that contribute to an issue. It aims to help teams understand how these factors relate and interact to produce different outcomes.
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Content ArticleBrian Edwards, Managing Director of Husoteria Ltd, shares his speaker abstract from the 5th European pharmacovigilance congress held 1-3 December 2021. To view all the speaker abstracts from the congress, published in the Therapeutics Advances in Drug Safety journal, download the attachment below.
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EventuntilAfter two years with virtual workshops due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are pleased to announce that the fifth International Workshop on Safety-II in Practice will be organised on site in Edinburgh, Scotland on September 7-9, 2022. The Workshop is organised by FRAMsynt. The workshop will begin with an optional half-day tutorial on Safety-II in Practice in the afternoon of September 7 (1330-1730 BST), and continue with two days of meetings and discussions from September 8 (0830-1700 BST) to September 9 (0830-1500 BST). There will be a walking tour of Edinburgh old town (hosted by Steven Shorrock) and a dinner on the evening of September 8 for those who wish to join. Aim of the workshop The aim of the workshop is to share experiences from existing and/or planned applications of a Safety-II approach in various industries and practices. The workshop will give the participants an opportunity to present and discuss problems encountered and lessons learned – good as well as bad, practical as well as methodological. The workshop is a unique opportunity for safety professionals and researchers to interact with like-minded colleagues, to debate the strengths and weaknesses of a Safety-II approach, and to share ideas for further developments. The guiding principle for the workshop is “long discussions interrupted by short presentations”. In order to achieve this, the number of participants will be limited to 60 – first come, first served. Participation The workshop is open to everyone regardless of their level of experience with Safety-II. It will address the use of Safety-II in a variety of fields and for purposes ranging from investigations, performance analyses, organisational management and development, individual and organisational learning, and resilience. The workshop will provide a unique opportunity to: Discuss and exchange experiences on how a Safety-II approach can be used to analyse and manage complex socio-technical systems. Receive feedback on and support for your own Safety-II projects and ideas. Learn about the latest developments and application areas of Safety-II. Develop a perspective on the long-term potential of a Safety-II approach. Discussion topics, presentations and papers You can contribute actively to the workshop by submitting proposals for: Topics or themes for panel discussions (preferably with a presentation or introduction, but open suggestions of themes are also welcome). Presentations of ongoing or already completed work in industry and/or academia. Ideas that you would like to get a second opinion on. Questions or issues that you have been wondering about and would like to hear more about. The relevance of a Safety-II perspective for individual and organisational learning. The strategic management of Safety-II: how to introduce changes to routines and daily practice. For each type of proposal, please provide a short abstract (about 100 – 200 words, but even less if need be) with a summary of what you would like to present or discuss and how you want to be involved. All proposals will be reviewed and comments to the submitters will be provided. Please submit your proposed contribution to: contact@humanisticsystems.com Register
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Content ArticleThis article by Penelope Hawe from the Menzies Center for Health Policy at the University of Sydney, looks at complexity and how it increases the unpredictability of interventions in systems. She argues that new metaphors and terminology are needed to capture the recognition that knowledge generation comes from the hands of practitioners as much as it comes from intervention researchers.
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Content ArticleThis download is the first of three chapters of a book which complements the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors' Healthcare Learning Pathway and is intended as a practical resource for students
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Content ArticleProfessor Peter Brennan is a NHS Consultant Surgeon in Portsmouth, specialising in head and neck cancer. In this episode of the Human Factor Podcast, Peter discusses how he is driving Human Factors approaches from his perspective. To date, Peter has published over 700 publications including more than 80 on Human Factors and patient safety. His HF work has changed the delivery of postgraduate surgery exam delivery in the UK and abroad. Watch all the Human Factors Podcast episodes here.
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EventuntilBringing together a community of human factors in patient safety advocates across Ireland and abroad, the annual Human Factors in Patient Safety Conference will offer the opportunity to gain valuable knowledge and insights from human factors experts. The conference will include contributions from: Martin Bromiley OBE, Founder of Clinical Human Factors Group UK – Listening Down to Develop your Safety Behaviours Mr Peter Duffy, Consultant Urologist – Whistle in the Wind: a Personal Exploration of the Consequences of Whistleblowing in Healthcare Professor Eva Doherty (Chair), Director of Human Factors in Patient Safety – The Irish Context, panel discussion Healthcare professionals can register for the event here. For more information, please email mschumanfactors@rcsi.ie.
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Content ArticleEffective incident investigation is an integral part of the provision of a safe blood transfusion service, with the aim to prevent recurrence of adverse events and harm to patients. Determining how an incident has taken place allows understanding of the gaps or failures within the system and identification of effective corrective and preventive measures that can be implemented to reduce risk of recurrence. Consideration of human factors supports a more sophisticated understanding of the factors that cause incidents, optimising human performance through better understanding of human behaviour and the factors that influence this behaviour, thus improving patient safety.
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Content ArticleThe Covid-19 pandemic presented the need for fast decision-making in a rapidly shifting global context. This article in BMJ Evidence Based Medicine looks at the limitations of traditional evidence-based medicine (EBM) approaches when investigating questions in the context of complex, shifting environments. The authors argue that it is time to take a more varied approach to defining what counts as ‘high-quality’ evidence. They introduce some conceptual tools and quality frameworks from various fields involving what is known as mechanistic research, including complexity science, engineering and the social sciences. The article proposes that the tools and frameworks of mechanistic evidence, sometimes known as ‘EBM+’ when combined with traditional EBM, may help develop the interdisciplinary evidence base needed to take us out of this protracted pandemic.
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Content ArticleSafety at design is giving due consideration to safety at the conceptual stage of your design. We mostly do not look at this and what we end up completing the design of a product with high ergonomics risks to the end users. What should we consider and how should we go about this? These and many more are will looked at in this presentation from Ehi Iden, chief executive of Occupational Health and Safety Managers.
