About Us

The Clinical Human Factors Group is a charity that works with healthcare professionals, managers and service-users partnering with experts in Human Factors from healthcare and other industries to campaign for change in the NHS and healthcare.

Our Vision

Our vision is of a healthcare system that places an understanding of Human Factors at the heart of improving clinical, managerial and organisational practice, leading to significant improvements in safety, efficiency and effectiveness.

Our Mission

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Building high reliability

Helping healthcare organisations build high reliability into operations.

Learning from success and failure.

Encouraging a just culture, better local investigations, so mistakes are not repeated and success is.

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Promoting Human Factors science

Through education and training in all healthcare settings and designing for safety.

Our Action

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We influence national policy...

by raising  awareness and putting  Human Factors on the agenda among politicians, policy makers, Royal Colleges, regulators, and healthcare.

We educate and inform...

through our seminar programme & resources.  Attracting audiences from healthcare, researchers, product developers, training providers and policy makers.

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We provide an independent platform...

for discussion, learning and debate about the best ways to implement and sustain Human Factors in the current and challenging healthcare environment.

“I speak about Elaine’s case at the start of every training day. …the next generation of clinicians will be far more aware of Human Factors and their impact on patient safety, thanks in no small part to your efforts”

Our Achievements

Here are some of the things we’ve done that have made a real world difference in our ongoing fight to make healthcare safer for everyone…

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Human Factors is now on the agenda

Our activity raises awareness – Human Factors is now a common discussion topic amongst politicians, policy makers, Royal Colleges, regulators and healthcare.  Human Factors methods are used to analyse serious incidents. There is recognition that addressing root causes within the system avoids reoccurrence rather than merely blaming an individual.

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An independent investigation branch is launched

We achieved the Charity’s long held ambition: the establishment of the World’s first national body in 2017 – a no-blame investigation body using the model from the transport industry.  We continue to work with policy makers to develop ground breaking legislation due before Parliament.

Human Factors Training is standard

Human Factors now feature in the work of professional bodies with the GMC and NMC incorporating it into standards of practice and education for doctors and nurses, along with the related topics of team resource management and non-technical skills training.

10 years of Open Seminars

We’ve educated, informed and motivated audiences across the NHS as well as, researchers, product developers, training providers and policy makers.  We attract international World-class, inspirational speakers, including our Trustees and Ambassadors, and patients and relatives that we have worked with to support them to tell their story. Through our seminars and more recently our online forum and conference meetings, we have provided a valued and independent platform for discussion, learning and debate about the best ways to implement and sustain Human Factors in the current and challenging healthcare environment.

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Human Factors is central to national projects

We provided expertise to develop the National Quality Board Concordat – a strategy to embed Human Factors into the NHS, and other nationwide projects including: Patient Safety FirstSign up to Safety; and Surgical Safety Task Force.  National enquiries draw upon our work to provide evidence for parliamentary committees for patient safety and investigations.

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Human Factors resources for healthcare

With additional support we have published resources developed by Human Factors experts working with front line healthcare workers to provide practical, realistic and easy to use resources.