Patient safety and human factors: definition and aims
Patient safety is the prevention of avoidable errors and adverse effects to patients associated with health care.
Staff practise patient safety when they apply safety science methods towards the goal of developing reliable systems of care.
So patient safety is both a characteristic of a healthcare system and a way of improving the quality of care.
We believe that much more can be done to reduce preventable harm in health care. We are focusing our efforts in the following three key areas.
Growing safety conscious organisational cultures
Organisational cultures can foster a proactive approach to patient safety. However we see attitudes and behaviours that discourage staff from learning from preventable incidents. This increases the likelihood of these incidents recurring. We can change attitudes by working with people to demonstrate how change can be made and sustained.
Designing for reliability
We can increase reliability when there is: agreement about the way of doing things; standardisation of elements of practice; and a commitment to implement best practice. Reliability changes our view of the world. It raises the importance of vigilance and sensitises us to the patient perspective.
Human factors as standard in education and training
The human factors approach to safer healthcare should be a part of the core curricula of all health professionals, with training needs to be co-ordinated along interprofessional lines.
For further definitions of terms that are often used within the patient safety context see the glossary.