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Showing results for tags 'Human factors'.
Found 547 results
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Content ArticleThe original National Safety Standards for Invasive Procedures (NatSSIPs) were published in 2015. Understanding of how to deliver safe care in a complex and pressurised system is evolving. These revised standards (NatSSIPs2) are intended to share the learning and best practice to support multidisciplinary teams and organisations to deliver safer care. The Centre for Perioperative Care shares their slideset on the revised standards.
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Content ArticleThis animation explains systems thinking and the principles of human factors in simple terms. Aimed at healthcare managers and clinicians involved in local level incident investigation, the film uses an example scenario–the incorrect prescription of medications–to introduce the concept of systems thinking and how to use it in healthcare safety investigations.
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Content ArticleThe Clinical Human Factors Group have created a sample template for Trusts looking to recruit a Human Factors and Ergonomics specialist. Please feel free to use and adapt this template to your organisation’s needs.
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Content Article
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. Laura and Suzy talk to us about the importance of embedding human factors in the design of healthcare systems and tools, the importance of equipping staff to think about system safety, and their work to establish a nationwide conversation about the impact of fatigue. -
Content ArticleThis systematic review in the Western Journal of Nursing Research examined the relationship between hospital nurse fatigue and outcomes. The authors found that fatigue was consistently associated with mental health problems, decreased nursing performance and sickness absence. Many studies confirmed that nurse fatigue is negatively associated with nurse, patient-safety and organisational outcomes. The review also highlighted gaps in current knowledge and the need for future research using a longitudinal design and measuring additional outcomes to better understand the consequences of nurse fatigue.
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Content ArticleThis Patient Safety Advisory from the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority provides an overview of the issues associated with healthcare worker fatigue. It outlines fatigue risk mitigation practices that are being used in healthcare and other industries, including comprehensive fatigue risk management programs.
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Content ArticleIn this blog, Sarah Douglas explains the impact that working night shifts can have on the body; there is growing evidence that night work contributes to a number of serious health conditions—from heart disease, diabetes and cancer to mental health issues. Sarah shares the vision behind Night Club, an award winning wellbeing programme that brings workers and employers together with sleep scientists to improve the health, wellbeing and engagement of night shift workers. She describes how the programme is helping staff improve their sleep health.
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Content ArticleWhen healthcare workers are fatigued, the safety of both patients and staff is compromised. This short article in the American Journal of Nursing reports on a recent webinar in which the Joint Commission distilled current research on fatigue, discussing its causes and symptoms and the various means of addressing the issue. Ann Scott Blouin, a nurse and Executive Vice President of Customer Relations at the Joint Commission, led the discussion and highlighted that factors contributing to staff fatigue fall into three categories: organisation and management issues, the nature of the work and personal challenges. Fatigue has emotional, physical, and behavioural consequences, including lapses in attention, diminished reaction time, and reduced motivation.
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Content ArticleInterruptions and multitasking are implicated as a major cause of clinical inefficiency and error. The aim of this study by Westbrook et al. was to measure the association between emergency doctors' rates of interruption and task completion times and rates.
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Content ArticleFatigue in anaesthesia practice is often ignored or accepted as the norm due to persistent, high-intensity work demands and expectations. This document produced by the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology (AANA) aims to provide guidance to healthcare professionals, healthcare facilities and nurse anaesthesia programs regarding sleep deprivation and fatigue. It provides evidence-based information that promotes fatigue management and work-life balance.
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Content ArticleThis systematic review in BMJ Open synthesised evidence on the impacts of insufficient sleep and fatigue on health and performance of physicians in independent practice, as well as on patient safety. The authors also assessed the effectiveness of interventions targeting insufficient sleep and fatigue. The authors found that fatigue and insufficient sleep may be associated with negative physician health outcomes, but concluded that current evidence is inadequate to inform practice recommendations.
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Content ArticleFatigue is a workplace hazard that affects the health and safety of patients, health care providers and the community. This blog from health tech company Cerner looks at the importance of managing fatigue in healthcare staff. The author suggests a three-step approach to lessen fatigue: Shift the culture of safety to include recognising and dealing with fatigue. Operationalise fatigue reduction measures within the organisation. Promote fatigue self-management through preventative strategies.
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Content ArticleThis guidance from the Office of Rail and Road outlines how to manage the risk of fatigue that may arise from a working pattern. It defines 'fatigue factors', highlighting that the more a working pattern features these fatigue factors, the greater the likely need to assess, avoid and control potential fatigue risks.
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Content ArticleThis brief paper reviews the available published literature on shiftwork and safety that allows the estimation of the relative risk of “accidents” or injuries associated with specific features of shift systems. It discusses three main trends in risk: Risk is higher on the night shift, and to a lesser extent the afternoon shift, than on the morning shift Risk increases over a span of shifts, especially so if they are night shifts Risk increases with increasing shift length over eight hours The authors discuss the fact that some of these trends are not entirely consistent with predictions made based on considerations of the circadian variations in sleep propensity or rated sleepiness, and consider factors relating to sleep that may underlie the observed trends in risk. They also discuss the practical implications of the trends in risk for the design of safer shift systems.
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Content ArticleHours of work and other conditions of service are matters for agreement between employers and staff, but it is vital that working patterns are designed to reduce risks from fatigue as much as is practical. This resource from the Office of Rail and Road outlines why the rail industry needs to take staff fatigue seriously, and provides links to key guidance.
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Content ArticleFatigue refers to the issues that arise from excessive working time or poorly designed shift patterns. It is generally considered to be a decline in mental and/or physical performance that results from prolonged exertion, sleep loss and/or disruption of the internal clock. Fatigue results in slower reactions, reduced ability to process information, memory lapses, absent-mindedness, decreased awareness, lack of attention and underestimation of risk. It can lead to errors and accidents, ill-health and injury, and reduced productivity and is often a root cause of major accidents. This guidance from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) outlines key information about fatigue and signposts to further resources about managing fatigue at work.
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Content ArticleSurprises in healthcare are common and can have lasting effects on clinicians. Steven Shorrock asked clinicians to reveal aspects of their experience with implications for learning.
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Content ArticleThe Centre for Perioperative Care (CPOC) has published new safety standards (NatSSIPs2) to enable all hospitals in the UK to improve patient safety by applying a consistent and proportionate set of safety checks for all invasive procedures. Listen to the podcast from the Royal College of Anaesthetists on the new standards.
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Content ArticleThis editorial in Anaesthesia looks at how the term 'human factors' has been applied to different aspects of anaesthesia over the past few years. The author calls for a deeper look at the application of human factors in the field of anaesthesia to ensure systems are designed to minimise the risk of human error and variation.
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Content ArticleThese Guidelines for the Provision of Anaesthetic Services (GPAS) support the development and delivery of high quality anaesthetic services. GPAS chapters have previously focused on a particular aspect of clinical service delivery. However, experience has identified a requirement in GPAS to describe what it is about a department of anaesthesia itself, beyond the different aspects of the clinical service delivery, that contribute to a successful department. The Good Department chapter has been developed to address this requirement, describing current best practice for developing and managing a safe and high quality anaesthesia service in terms of the non-clinical aspects of the service that underpin the clinical provision. The guidance makes recommendations in terms of: leadership, strategy and management workforce education and training clinical governance support services.
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Content ArticleAfter attending a Safety II workshop, Paul Stretton discusses what the future holds for the Safety II/Resilience Engineering community.
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Content ArticleThe primary purpose of this document from the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) is to allow HSE professionals who provide answers to the pre-qualification questionnaires to quickly establish if their companies apply human factors / human performance as per the industry guidance. Secondly, this guidance may be used by anyone who wishes to quickly get an insight into the industry guidance, without reading dozens of reports. To access the report you will need to fill in a form from the SPE website.
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Content ArticleThe e-learning module, Human Factors in health care includes seven videos and is available free to all health care professionals via the LearnOnline platform. The module has been produced by the New Zealand Health Quality & Safety Commission, funded by the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) and supported by WorkSafe.
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Content ArticleMore work is needed on understanding and addressing a lack of sleep in rail workers, a new study has argued. Researchers looked at the difference between when staff were on day shifts and when they were working at night. They discovered a “feast and famine” scenario where 41% reported getting six hours of sleep or less when working days, compared to 63% when working nights. The findings, published in the Applied Ergonomics journal, suggested that many staff weren’t getting enough sleep and having less than six hours was linked to feeling very sleepy during the day. More than one in ten shift workers also reported they had been awake for between 18 and 24 hours by the time they finished work at least once during the past week. This led to fears that their tiredness could have an impact on road safety if they were driving home from work. The report said: “Sleep restriction and sleep deprivation, even in the short term, are known to affect cognitive performance. For a safety critical industry, this data should raise a significant concern.”
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Content ArticleThis National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) booklet presents information concerning how better design can be used to make the dispensing process safer in community pharmacies, dispensing doctor practices and hospital pharmacies. There are a number of new factors that will impact on the dispensing process, such as: electronic prescription services; auto-id and automation technologies; more responsibilities for pharmacy technicians; and enhanced pharmacy services. These factors have been incorporated into these safer design recommendations Organisations, managers and healthcare workers involved in dispensing medicines should use this booklet as a resource to help introduce new initiatives to further minimise harms from medicines.
