Thursday 9 September | 08:00-09:00

Format: Workshop

Stream: Safety

Content filters: For those new to quality improvement

The field of human factors is an essential component to improve patient safety, helping health care teams create processes and designs according to how people physically and psychologically behave to avoid errors. With the growing complexity of health care — whether new technologies or moving from volume to value or addressing social determinants of health — there is growing concern that health care providers are required to operate in high pressure, in complex and changing healthcare environments. We need robust ways to support practitioners in new and expanded ways, in order to drive safer patient care. In healthcare settings, human factors are acknowledged as a requisite for improving patient safety.

This session will discuss how human factors principles offer the opportunity to create human-centred approaches and will explore how these can be applied and embedded as part of safety systems.

After this session, participants will be able to:

• Describe the key elements of human factors in healthcare


• Learn about how human factors can be used at the unit and systems level to drive safer care


• Explore strategies to embed human factors as an integral part of safety systems

Frank Federico, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI); USA

Trish Bradd, Clinical Excellence Commission (CEC); Australia

James Won, Children’s Hospital; Philadelphia