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CHAPTER 4 Human factors

      Learning outcomes

      After reading this chapter, you will be able to:

4.1 Introduction

      The emphasis on the management of obstetric urgent or emergency care has traditionally concentrated on knowledge and application of the appropriate technical skills for the given situation. An often overlooked element is how in these high‐pressure situations, maternity staff from several disciplines can come together to form an effective team that minimises error and works actively to prevent adverse events to minimise patient harm The maternity team in acute emergencies is made up of medical staff from different specialties and of varying seniority, midwives and ancillary staff (including healthcare assistants, operating department assistants, scrub nurses, etc.). The hospital‐based maternity team also relies on close links with laboratory and imaging teams during emergencies, as well as support from administrative teams (ward clerks, hospital switchboard) and portering services. This is a complex system and requires knowledge of human factors and team working. The role of simulation and training as promoted within the mMOET course is vital in improving how individuals will work within their own teams during obstetric emergencies.

      This chapter provides a brief introduction to some of the human factors that can affect the performance of individuals and teams in the healthcare environment. Human factors, also referred to as ergonomics, is an established scientific discipline and clinical human factors has been described as:

       Enhancing clinical performance through an understanding of the effects of teamwork, tasks, equipment, workspace, culture and organisation on human behaviour and abilities and application of that knowledge in clinical settings

      (Kohn et al., 2010).

4.2 Extent of healthcare error

      In 2000 an influential report entitled To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System (Kohn et al., 2010) suggested that across the USA somewhere between 44 000 and 98 000 deaths each year could be attributed to medical error. A pilot study in the UK demonstrated that approximately 1 in 10 patients admitted to healthcare experienced an adverse event.

      Healthcare has been able to learn from a number of other high‐risk industries including the nuclear, petrochemical, space exploration, military and aviation industries about how team issues have been managed. These lessons have been slowly adopted and translated to healthcare.

Specialist working groups and national bodies have been instrumental in promoting awareness of the importance of human factors in healthcare. They aim to raise awareness and promote the principles and practices of human factors, identify current human factor activity, capability and barriers, and create conditions to support human factors being embedded at a local level. One such example of this in the UK is the Human Factors Clinical Working Group and the National Quality Board’s concordat statement on human factors.

4.3 Causes of healthcare error

      Consider this example of an adverse event:

      A woman in labour needs to receive an infusion of a particular drug to manage severe hypertension. An error occurs and she receives an incorrect dose of the drug. What are the potential causes of this situation?

      Q. What one thing links all of these errors?

      A. The humans involved – these are all examples of human errors.

      Humans make mistakes. No amount of checks and procedures will mitigate this fact. In fact the only way to completely remove human error is to remove all the humans involved. It is vital therefore that we look to work in a way that, wherever possible, minimises the occurrence of mistakes and ensures that when they do occur the method minimises the chance of the error resulting in an adverse event.

4.4 Human error

It has been suggested that these human errors can be further categorised

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