Ergonomics/Human Factors Education in United Kingdom

Abstract

This paper presents a summary of the Ergonomics and Human Factors (EHF) professional accreditation process in the UK. EHF education can be accredited by the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (CIEHF) as qualifying courses and as short (training) courses. A framework is used as professional competencies (5 units) with expected levels of proficiency to support career development through membership grades (student, graduate, registered, fellow). An example of education is given with the 5 postgraduate programmes (MSc, Postgraduate Diploma, Postgraduate Certificate) at Loughborough University: Ergonomics and Human Factors, Human Factors in Transport. Human Factors for Inclusive Design, Ergonomics in Health and Community Care, and Human Factors and Ergonomics for Patient Safety. Finally, an opportunity is offered to explore competency with an affiliate discipline (Unser Experience) in the context of usability testing for medical devices.

Tertiary education in ergonomics and human factors: quo vadis?

“…The requirement for HFE knowledge and skills has moved beyond traditional industrial sectors (e.g. manufacturing, military, oil & gas, mining) and is being used more widely in service sectors (Hignett and Gyi, 2018), including schools (Legg, 2006;Legg and Bennett, 2007). Employers are searching for qualified HFE professionals with accredited competences (university degree) and/or certification from recognised institutes (Górska and Kossobudzka-Górska, 2018).…”

“…Smith (2012) provides a comprehensive summary of certification across the world. Table 1 outlines the similarities and differences between competency frameworks for the IEA (Tey and Graf, 2018), Centre for Registration of European Ergonomists (Górska and Kossobudzka-Górska, 2018), and the Chartered Institutes of Ergonomics & Human Factors in the UK (Hignett and Gyi, 2018), Canada (Black and Village, 2018) and Mexico (Avila-Chaurand et al, 2018).…”