The topic related to human factors broadly depends on the scientific study for understanding and evaluating the interaction of the human with other factors of a workplace. The human factors contribute towards the evaluation of tasks, goods, environment, jobs and arrangements in order to establish compatibility with the needs, limitations and abilities of all people. In other words, human factors comprise of an organisation, job and environment related factors that influence the behaviour of the individual at work and can also affect safety and health (Lim, Cortina, & Magley, 2015). Mistakes and errors are committed by each and every individual irrespective of the training received for the performance of the job. Reducing errors and influencing the human behaviour is the main point that helps in understanding the human factors. Human factors are apprehensive about what the individuals are asked to do, where they are working and who is doing the task. All these questions affect the local as well as national concern. For every industry, it is important to understand that human factors are not random. The report focuses on the key issues related to the human factors and further, it includes the impact of human factors on the quality and safety of healthcare.
Key issues associated with Human factors and Workplace performance
Human factors are organisational, job and environmental factors as well as individual and human features that influence the behaviour at work and can affect safety and health. According to the Human Factors in Patients Safety: people’s health and safety, (2009) human factors include environmental, organisation and job factors and individual and human characteristics. These factors influence the behaviour of the humans at work or can influence people’s health and safety. Work performance determines the quantity and quality of work expected from each employee. Rouse, (2016) has given different definition for the human factor that is, human factors is a study of the manner in which the humans behave psychologically and physically in respect of particular services, product or environment. The study of human factors provides its focus on general human behaviour that is related to the expertise, on a common type of product design, on specific product design or the environment as a whole, or on specific design aspects of a particular product or environment.
For every business, humans are the most important asset and very important resources. When a business plans to implement some strategies and rules, human resource arrives as a core ingredient. Human factors are the combination of norms, disciplines, behaviours, values and codes of conducts. The strong and weak human factors which are available in the organisation help in ensuring the implementation of integral values in the workplace in a stronger or weaker manner respectively.
According to Reid and Bromiley, (2012), it is a human tendency of making errors no matter how motivated and trained they are. In the workplace, the significance of such human failures can be seen. When the analysis of incidents and accidents is conducted, the figures show that the human failures are the main cause behind nearly all exposures and accidents to a substance dangerous for health. As per Norris, Currie, & Lecko, (2012), some types of errors occur due to the actions that are not planned by the humans. These types of errors mostly occur during the performance of familiar tasks which include lapses and slips. Vitiations such as shortcuts, circumventions, work around, and non-compliances are different from the not planned accidents where procedure is not carried out by an individual correctly due to deliberate intentions. These are rarely sabotaged and usually are a consequence of an intention to get the work done in an efficient manner. Written and spoken communication can be critical in marinating safety. These include normal communication in the form of safety information communication between various teams along with the team members while performing processes or maintenance work and emergency communication. Communication plays a significant role in providing the wide range of safety activities and tasks such as emergency response, entry to narrowed space, as well as in the harmonisation of activities between the organisation and diverse parties. McKay & Wieck, (2014) stated that the design of equipment, plants and control room could have a huge effect on the human performance. The design of equipment, workstation and tasks can help the humans in reducing human errors, ill health and accidents. The humans who fail in observing ergonomic principle can result in severe concerns for individuals and the entire organisation. The efficient use of ergonomics will lead to safety and productivity in the work environment. Christian, Bradley, Wallace & Burke (2011) have argued that poor design influences ill health from work and has been assumed as a main reason of accidents. The use of human factors to the planning and development of systems and services is also called Human Factors Integration or Human Factors Engineering.
Singer, Lin, Falwell, Gaba and Baker (2010) stated that a number of organisations face continuous pressure of making a change for the purpose of meeting business objectives in a competitive marketplace. Many industries are going under the process of change due to continuous pressure relating to staff reduction and for organisational change. Singer et. al. (2010) specifies that changes that take place in an organisation such as reducing staff, combining departments, change of responsibility and roles using outsourcing or contractors are generally not controlled or analysed as a process of change.
Testing, inspection and maintenance are the main activities that take place in many industries specifically in those industries that are involved in the major hazards. These activate can be measured by two means- assessment of the process and review of the outputs. The method outlined in HSE’s publication- successful health and safety management may be followed by the assessment of the process.
The Human Factors and Ergonomics includes the wide range of issues involved in the system design of quality and safety of healthcare such as organisational, cognitive and physical issues. At the organisational issues, the HFE provides its emphasis on system design, sociotechnical system, job design, teamwork, coordination and communication. Cognitive HFE issues involves interaction among individuals and the rest of the system such as mental workload, attention, memory, perception and support in decision-making. The Physical HFE issues involve those physical dimensions tools which are not fit for physical characteristics of the users, physical outline that does not support clinician work and inappropriately designed physical situation.
According to WHO (2015), the main concern area across the globe in the health care system is Patient safety. In continuation, Carayon et. al. (2013) state that most of the accidents and incidents in health care system happen with patients just due to the non- provision of adequate attention to the issues relating to the patient safety. Moreover, the accidents and incidents take place in the healthcare because the system does not consider ergonomics and human factors at the time of designing the new system or implementing the new process, teams, jobs, workflow, technologies and sociotechnical system in the new or current system. According to the Carayon et.al (2013), there are various methods and approaches that can be applied and utilised to maximise the patient safety issues in the world. There are few HFE approaches and methods some of them are the Carayon and colleagues system engineering initiative and Vincent and colleagues system approach for patient safety. The Ergonomics and human factors method is used to maximise the issues relating to the patient safety in healthcare sectors. The application of HFE in patient safety and healthcare is not new.
Health care organisation, leaders and professionals have faith in the Human Factors and Engineering that they can introduce knowledge in redesigning the health care system and process and it can also help in the improvement of patient quality and safety. For minimising the incidents and accidents along with ensuring the patient safety in the complex healthcare system, a perfect tool is required by human factors and engineering (Carayon, 2010). As per the study of Baicker, Cutler and Song (2010) HFE help healthcare organisations in solving their challenges and problems by designing the proper system that can identify the required area. HFE is very important in the promotion of patient safety and part in developing an understanding among the health care workforce so they can take an active part in improving quality of care, promoting patient safety, and improving process design.
According to the study of Wanger et.al. (2011) deprived nursing management, poor working condition and absenteeism of teamwork in the system are considered as the main obstacles in the patient safety culture. Singer et.al. (2010) stated how daily activities, believes, interpersonal values and experience at workplace affect and influences the safety environment of hospitals. The interpersonal values have a huge influence on the attitude of an individual and behaviour toward patient safety. In addition, Singer (2010) state, that management decision making and resource management provide its influence on the unit and workers safety climate attitude. While arguing, Wagner (2011) point out that the administration and nurses observe the culture of safety as a distrust culture or culture of blame. Chen and Huang, (2013) shows that higher the safety culture at the workplace, higher is the safety performance.
To understand the concept of HFE, two examples have been discussed in the assignment, the first example is related to HFE in the design and application of health IT. Beuscart and colleagues have developed an HFE approach that is related to the work system design and healthcare technology, along with the set of organised technic to enhance the work system. The HFE approach of Beuscart and colleagues include four stages. The HFE approach is used to implement the computerized physician order entry and improves the design. The four steps that Beuscart and colleagues have developed includes the first step which involve analysis of medication use process and recommendations for system redesign: the research that was conducted is based on the systematic qualitative analysis of the medication ordering – dispensing – administration process (Yuan & Woodman, 2014). More than 7000 papers medication orders were written by the physicians and these were kept for nurses as reviewed. The second step discussed cooperative system design- the observation results were provided to nurses for their response, software models related to engineering which was developed for the distribution of tasks observed. The third step is about usability evaluation of CPOE technology- the researcher evaluated the usability of the proposed CPOE technology. The last step includes Iterative HFE redesign: the CPOE technology has been redesigned, after identifying the usability issues the possible solutions have been provided and evaluated with respect of cost and benefits (Yuan & Woodman, 2014).
The second example is related to HFE in the physical design of operating rooms. In this example, the HFE is utilized to solve the problem of controlling infections in the operating room. To reduce down the risk of infection, HFE has suggested that surgical devices need to be kept in a clean place. In this approach, the hospital surgical staff and professional developed their learning from the runway of the international airport that includes incident management, safety regulations and rules, traffic flow, and position of material. The surgical staff has applied the knowledge in safety management, a process of incident reporting and position of surgical materials and tables. The hospital surgical staff has planned and applied the standards for supporting the correct positioning of the surgical devices. The compliance with the positioning of surgical devices was evaluated by observing total 182 operations before the implementation of the standards (Salas, Cooke & Rosen, 2012).
Conclusion
Human factors are those factors that impact the safety and quality of the workplace. For every business, the issues of safety and quality always remain at first place. It became essential for the organisations to manage human failures because it is essential to prevent a human form, major accidents, ill health and occupational accidents. By understanding the different type of human failures, the businesses can be assisted in understanding the controllable measures that can control the workplace accidents. In healthcare, huge number of accidents and incidents take place for which Ergonomics approach was developed. Ergonomics is known for solving physical problems but it also deals with the psychological and social aspects of the person at their work. Ergonomics also has the potential for reducing ill health at work such as work related to asthma, hearing loss, noise-induced, shoulder and back pain aches, damage to wrists. If at the workplace, the management did not follow the ergonomics approach, it can rise to some serious consequences for the people and the organisation as a whole.
References
Baicker, K., Cutler, D., & Song, Z. (2010). Workplace wellness programs can generate savings. Journal of Health affairs, 29(2), 304-311.
Carayon, P. 2010, Human factors in patient safety as an innovation. Journal of Applied Ergonomics, 41, pp. 657-665.
Carayon, P., Wetterneck, T., Rivera-Rodriguez, A., Hundt, A., Hoonakker, P., Holden, R. & Gurses, A. 2013, Human factors systems approach to healthcare quality and patient safety. Journal of Applied Ergonomics, 45, pp. 14-25.
Chen, C. J., & Huang, J. W. (2013). Strategic human resource practices and innovation performance—The mediating role of knowledge management capacity. Journal of business research, 62(1), 104-114.
Christian, M. S., Bradley, J. C., Wallace, J. C., & Burke, M. J. (2011). Workplace safety: a meta-analysis of the roles of person and situation factors. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(5), 1103.
Lim, S., Cortina, L. M., & Magley, V. J. (2015). Personal and workgroup incivility: impact on work and health outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 95.
McKay, C. & Wieck, L. (2014) Evaluation of a Collaborative Care Model for Hospitalized Patients. Journal of Nursing Economics, 32, No., 5, pp. 248-267.
Norris, B., Currie, L. & Lecko, C. (2012). The importance of applying human factors to nursing practice. Journal of Nursing Standard, 26, No. 32, pp. 36-40.
Reid, J. & Bromiley, M. (2012). Clinical human factors: the need to speak up to improve patient safety, in: Journal of Nursing Standard, 26(35), pp. 35-40.
Rouse, M. (2016). Human Factors (ergonomics).Retrieved from: https://searchmicroservices.techtarget.com/definition/human-factors-ergonomics
Salas, E., Cooke, N. J., & Rosen, M. A. (2012). On teams, teamwork, and team performance: Discoveries and developments. Human factors, 50(3), 540-547.
Singer, S., Lin, S., Falwell, A., Gaba, D. & Baker, L. (2010), Relationship of safety climate and safety performance in hospitals. Journal of Health Services Research, 44, No. 2, Part I, pp 399-421.
Wagner, L., Capezuti, E. & Rice, J. 2011, Nurses’ perception of safety culture in longterm care settings. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 41, No. 2, pp. 184-192.
WHO. (2015). Ten facts on patient safety. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/features/factfiles/patient_safety/en/ , accessed 07.09.2015.
Yuan, F., & Woodman, R. W. (2014). Innovative behavior in the workplace: The role of performance and image outcome expectations. Academy of Management Journal, 53(2), 323-342.
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