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VHA National Center for Patient Safety

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Health Care Human Factors Curriculum

Kristen Miller, Dr.P.H., NCPS patient safety fellow, teaches a class on VA patient safety to VA caregivers.

Health care facilities struggle to standardize approaches and decrease complexity. Incorporating human factors engineering principles in each facility’s service area can make a critical difference to this aspect of patient safety.

By Joe Murphy, APR, NCPS public affairs officer
Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Preventable or avoidable adverse events can often be attributed to a failure to follow recognized, evidence-based best practices or guidelines at the individual and/or system level.

“That’s why we developed a course for VA caregivers,” said Kristen Miller, Dr.P.H., NCPS patient safety fellow. “The curriculum provides essential knowledge about human factors and patient safety, our goal being to offer participants the most recent practices, innovative interventions and facilitate hands-on activities that demonstrate the ‘so what’ of health care human factors.”

"Human factors awareness,” she continued, “can lead to improved quality, a more involved and responsible workforce and an environment that ensures continuing worker and patient safety.”

Studies of adverse medical events have heightened awareness of the benefits of re-engineering systems and processes to reduce them.

Dr. Miller said that the training modules are focused on the same cognitive, ergonomics, and human factors engineering analyses that the VA expects of device manufacturers. “We want to encourage VA health care providers to apply these principles locally, making their health care systems and services safer for patients,” she said. 

The re-engineering processes, combined with a shift to a culture of safety, is essential if health care organizations are to continue to reduce harm to patients from increasingly complex medical procedures.

VA caregivers participate in a hands-on training exercise during a class on patient safety held at NCPS.

Preventable or avoidable adverse events can often be attributed to a failure to follow recognized, evidence-based best practices or guidelines at the individual and/or system level, which makes NCPS' patient safety training courses an important part of VA's patient safety efforts.

“Health care facilities struggle to standardize approaches and decrease complexity,” she continued. “Incorporating human factors engineering principles in each facility’s service area can make a critical difference to this aspect of patient safety.”  

NCPS has offered providers courses on patient safety since 1999, as well as having success through interactive teaching methods. Based on adult learning theories, learning experiences are most effective when audiences are engaged through interactive and hands-on exercises. 

The NCPS Healthcare Human Factors Curriculum includes 12 modules organized around five critical concepts of human factors, as applied to health care:

  • Human Factors and Ergonomics (the human in the system)
  • Purchasing for Safety
  • Investigation and Analysis (learning from experience)
  • Key Components to a Safer System
  • Taking Action (YOU can make the difference)

Last fall, NCPS pilot tested the initiative. Results have so far demonstrated that participants can acquire a fresh approach to problem solving that can be applied to current day-to-day operations, as well as future patient care scenarios. 

“Participants have felt that the course has encouraged creative thinking and engaged them in learning,” Dr. Miller concluded. “They have seen how individual limitations and system vulnerabilities may compromise patient outcomes and even contribute to occupational injuries.” 

NCPS expects to launch the course later this year.

Learn moreHealthcare Human Factors Modules Curriculum 

Questions? NCPS@va.gov 

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