Health and social care ergonomics: patient safety in practice

Abstract

as current Chair of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA) Technical Group on Healthcare. It provides a collection of papers to illustrate current research which is helping to introduce and implement Ergonomics (Human Factors) theory and practice into healthcare. A previous special issue of Ergonomics (Edworthy et al. 2006) included a wide range of Human Factors contributions to the area of patient safety, from systems (macro-ergonomics) analyses to specific, relatively contained interactions and interfaces (micro-ergonomics). This special issue, 10 years later, provides a similar range of macro and micro topics as well as discussions about the location of HFE input (upstream/ downstream) and a greater consideration of obstacles to the use of HFE in practice (rather than research). We are intentionally using 'Human Factors' and 'Ergonomics' interchangeably in this editorial to reflect the international use of both terms in healthcare. Some countries such as UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand include both in the name of professional societies/institutes, whilst most non-English speaking countries use 'Ergonomics'. In our reflection of the past 10 years, we comment on the progress (or lack) for embedding Human Factors in healthcare practice, technology and changing culture. Our much missed colleague, Professor Bob Wears reflected on this (and other topics) in 2015, suggesting that the lack of progress may be due to 'medicalization' , where a certain school of thought among health professionals-managed to take it [patient safety] over, displacing other forms of scientific and professional activity, and turning it from a reformist movement to a conventional, business-as-usual activity, ironically with the best of intentions.

Targeted Subcutaneous Vibration With Single-Neuron Electrophysiology As a Novel Method for Understanding the Central Effects of Peripheral Vibrational Therapy in a Rodent Model

“…There is also compelling evidence demonstrating central changes in response to mechanical vibration as measured with fMRI, EEG, heart rate variability, and evoked potentials. 18,22-24 Unfortunately, the lack of better detail to supraspinal responses is still an impediment to the development of evidence-based therapeutic guidelines and consensus on vibration’s therapeutic value and mechanism of action. The use of fMRI lacks temporal and spatial resolution and primarily gives regional specificity and indirect information about neuron activity.…”

Security or Safety: Quantitative and Comparative Analysis of Usage in Research Works Published in 2004–2019

“…Analysis of the article content with the relevant categories "state", "health", and "education" shows that these publications are devoted to political (organizational and administrative), and police measures in the area of public security connected with health protection [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]; food security [26][27][28]; protection from threats and violence in educational sphere [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]; urban security [41][42][43][44][45][46][47]; and protection from crime and terrorism [48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55]. These life spheres and human behavior are evaluated for external risks and physical threats with preventive or reactive impacts on the environment and social relations being the factors and tools of protection from them.…”

Hazard Assessment and Remediation Tool for Simulation-Based Healthcare Facility Design Testing

“…Through standardization and optimization of coding practices and refinement of operational definitions, we were able to achieve excellent IRR between these multidisciplinary rating pairs. Recognizing that many institutions do not have embedded human factors experts (Hignett et al, 2018;Wears, 2015), we also established IRR between individual clinician raters. The rigorous and structured nature of the tool thereby indirectly lends a human factors lens when utilized by individual trained clinician raters.…”