ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the human factors engineering (HFE) principles and some techniques of preventing harm. Taking action on potential human errors so that harm never reaches patients is a very productive innovation because its impact is significant. HFE focuses on how people interact with tasks, machines, and the environment with the consideration that humans have limitations and capabilities. The crew resource management methodology is the biggest gift to healthcare from the aviation industry. It has worked beyond anyone’s expectations in bringing the central line-associated bloodstream infections almost down to zero in many hospitals. The more the safeguards on latent errors, the less likely is the impact of human errors. For a human error to cause an adverse event, a hole in each of the several protections has to be activated to do the harm. Mistake proofing cannot eliminate all errors and failures, but often it is very cost effective in producing a high return on investment.