Clinical considerations for the allied professionals: The role of human factors in health care

Abstract

a p e c 1. What is human factors engineering (HFE)? Answer: The early efforts of HFE can be traced to World ar II, when poor aircraft cockpit design caused fatal rashes. Experimental psychologists identified inherently onfusing display outputs as the cause and reduced the umber of fatalities and damaged planes by redesigning the isplays. From this, human factors engineering evolved as a disipline that aims to improve the design of devices, software, nd systems to conform to user needs, capabilities, and imitations. The fundamental goals of HFE are to increase roductivity, reduce errors, and increase the level of safety uring human-machine interaction. 2. Isn’t HFE really just about applying common sense? Answer: Human-centered design is common sense, but his common sense approach is not often taken. Historically, f equipment could physically do what it was designed to do, t was deemed a success and people worked around its imitations. Today, with such complicated designs people an no longer effectively adapt to a poor design but rather a esign must adapt to the strengths and limitations of people. FE helps to facilitate this shift in design philosophy. 3. Given our knowledge of the human sciences and uman factors, why do we still have poorly designed medcal equipment? Answer: As a result of the efforts of many patient safety rganizations, the design of medical devices has started to mprove. These improvements are primarily physical hanges, such as the use of color-coded tubing to indicate ifferent types of infusion. However, cognitive improveents that improve a user’s perception of how a device perates are lagging behind. Medical device manufacturers do not readily use HFE. here often is a reluctance to undertake HFE improvements ecause manufacturers face challenges making a business ase to justify them, largely because of the difficulty in rospectively measuring improvements. Some device man-