Service Description

Human Factors approaches underpin current patient safety and quality improvement science, offering an integrated, evidenced and coherent approach to aviation safety, patient safety, quality improvement and clinical excellence. The principles and practices of Human Factors focus on optimising human performance through better understanding the behaviour of individuals, their interactions with each other and with their environment. By acknowledging human limitations, Human Factors offers ways to minimise and mitigate human frailties, so reducing error and its consequences. The system-wide adoption of these concepts offers a unique opportunity to support cultural change and empower the organisations to put patient safety and clinical excellence at its heart. Human Factors principles can be applied in the identification, assessment and management of risks, and in the analysis of incidents to identify learning and corrective actions. More broadly, Human Factors understanding and techniques can be used to inform quality improvement in teams and services, support change management, and help to emphasise the importance of the design of equipment, processes and procedures. This means acknowledging that Human Factors is not a separate agenda or programme, but a way of thinking that should be incorporated as part of the design of processes, jobs and training.