Human factors in nursing: The time is now

Abstract

Objective: To raise awareness for nurses about the differences between human factors, patient safety, and communication for safer process and system redesign.

Setting: Nursing service environments.

Primary argument: Nursing contributes at the sharp end of healthcare service provision. Communication is the most consistent pre‑condition and consequence in any incident. Clarification of the role of Human Factors design in communication is critical to future research on process improvement in nursing. Human Factors is a key to the best practice management of system and process design as it builds‑in the capabilities and limitations of humans in the workforce. Human Factors design is especially important for nursing as the ‘caring’ profession is vulnerable to high, unmonitored workloads directly and indirectly associated with the nurse’s role and scope of practice. Patient Safety data and subsequent literature supports the aim of designing systems to fit better with humans, not humans working to suit systems. The question remains, how should nurses be doing this?

Conclusion: Health care service provision is complex, but understanding the underpinning human factors of the work environment and engaging in strategies to manage productivity fundamentally bound to human performance is paramount to higher‑quality, safer care. Nurses need to recognise the precursory and antecedent human factors known to cause errors, and study their effect in redesigned systems using anterograde studies. Adoption of Human Factors research and proactively using the lessons learned