Human Factors in a Healthcare Environment

Discover how understanding human factors can improve patient safety

Human factors is the study of how humans behave and interact with each other and their surroundings. It considers how humans interact in the workplace and how, due to the inevitability of human error, mistakes are likely to occur.

On this course you will look at human factors in a healthcare environment, an area where it is vital to limit mistakes because human error can affect patient safety. You will learn about systems that pre-empt the inevitability of human error and can help improve clinical practice and patient safety as a whole.

This course is for healthcare professionals of all levels, but many of the topics discussed are transferable across other industries.

• The Basic Principles of Human Factors
• Introduction to the course
• Introduction to human factors
• Cognitive Topics
• Application of Human Factors to Healthcare
• Introduction to Week 2
• Human factors in healthcare
• Communication
• Applying human factors in healthcare
• Implementing Change - Creating a Safety Culture
• Introduction to Week 3
• Error reporting in healthcare
• Implementing change
• End of course activities