There is a trend in modern organisations to ban the use of TLAs (three-letter abbreviations) in work communications. In human factors terms, this is a Good Thing: abbreviations are divisive – separating and excluding those who don’t happen to be familiar with them;...
I’m delighted to have accepted an invitation to join Clinical Human Factors Group (CHFG) as a Patron. What, you may ask, does a Patron do? Well, as I see it, my job is to lend my support to CHFG, to raise the profile even more, to be an ambassador where it matters...
Specifying, buying and assessing healthcare products presents one of the best opportunities to control risks to patients (and staff) safety. 2019 to 2020 saw 54,812 patient safety incidents identified as being related to medical devices and equipment. This figure is...
"On a winter’s morning in April 2020, we approached the London Excel centre transformed by the pandemic and the predicted first wave into the NHS Nightingale Hospital, London (NGL). For some of us it was the first time out since lockdown started to join a new team,...
The pandemic magnified human factors and ergonomics issues in healthcare As we grappled with new ways of working, unfamiliar roles and teams, working under intense pressure in newly configured workplaces and if that wasn’t a big enough challenge – the hindrance to...
People with an interest in patient safety read the interim Ockenden report with despair. It was immediately and starkly apparent that it repeated many of the common themes which have emerged in other patient safety investigations. Further, as the report...
"Not so long ago I finished 4 years of my life teaching aerobatics. If you ever wanted a time bound place to study humans under pressure this is probably one of the best places to be. And it wasn’t just the trainees under pressure! At the start of the COVID pandemic...
“Feeling safe enough to express yourself in the workplace” - behaviours to support psychological safety In 2005 my late wife Elaine, mum to our two young children, died during an attempted operation. A skilled clinical team were overcome when an unexpected...
NHS Supply Chain has welcomed the CHFG guide to introduce human factors into procurement. Jane Feinmann writes for the BMJ. There are increasing signs that the pandemic is forcing change—with the NHS taking human factors and ergonomics seriously. The...