ABSTRACT
Healthcare clinicians are ve1y good at figuring out how to make things work to bring about the best for patients. Good intentions and the effort to work-around design problems can lead to unanticipated patient harm. We arc teaching a faculty development workshop aimed at training physicians and other allied health professionals to observe, and report devices and systems that fall short of excellent, safe design (Aron and Headrick, 2002). Reliable manufacturers want to know when their products risk causing harm to patients. Clinicians coping with less than excellent design reduce demand for high reliability. Teaching basic human factors engineering principles provides a basis for making demands for excellence in the design ofhealthcare systems.
