Increased concern for patient safety has put Human Factors at the top of the agenda of practitioners, hospitals, and even governments. The risks to patients are many and diverse, and the complexity of the healthcare system that delivers them is huge. Yet the discourse is often oversimplified and underdeveloped. Written from a scientific, human factors perspective, Patient Safety: A Human Factors Approach delineates a method that can enlighten and clarify this discourse as well as put us on a better path to correcting the issues.

Features

• The difficult connections between error, competence, and identity in healthcare—a mix that makes medicine unique among safety crtical worlds
• Material written with the medical practitioner audience in mind
• The latest human factors/ergonomics research applicable to patient safety with examples that connect theory to actual practice
• Discussion on accountability and just culture
• Information in easy-to-use bulleted lists; illustrations where possible; non-specialist language making it accessible to all levels of professions and practioners in healthcare

The breadth of the human factors approach is itself testimony to the realization that there are no easy answers or silver bullets for resolving the issues in patient safety. A user-friendly introduction to the approach, this book takes the complexity of healthcare seriously and doesn’t over simplify the problem. It demonstrates what the approach does do, that is offer the substance and guidance to consider the issues in all their nuance and complexity.

By Sidney Dekker
Published: May 2011, 261 pages

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