PS 103: Human Factors and Safety* Lesson 1: Understanding the Science of Human Factors Human cognition, both conscious and unconscious processing, is prone to error in known ways. Human factors is an established science that uses many disciplines (such as anatomy, physiology, physics, and biomechanics) to understand how people perform under different circumstances. This course defines human factors as: the study of all the factors that make it easier to do the work in the right way. The science of human factors is particularly useful for understanding human behavior in safety-critical situations, such as providing health care. Issues that impact human performance and increase risk for error include the following: Factors that are in play before action takes place. These are predisposing mental and physiological states, such as fatigue, stress, dehydration, hunger, and boredom. Factors that directly enable decision making, such as perception, attention, memory, reasoning, and judgment. Factors that directly enable decision execution, such as communication and able to carry out the intended action. Lesson 2: Changes on Human Factors Design Principles The science of human factors the study of the interrelationship between humans — and their environment has identified design principles that include the following: — Simplify. Simplifying involves taking steps out of a process. Standardize. Standardizing removes variation and confusion and promotes predictability and consistency. Use forcing functions and constraints. Forcing functions make it impossible to do a task incorrectly. They create a hard stop that you cannot pass unless you change your actions. A constraint is the of being checked, restricted, or compelled to avoid or perform some action. Use redundancies. A typical redundancy is double-checking someone’s work. Avoid reliance on memory. Checklists are a valuable tool to reduce reliance on memory.
PS 103: Human Factors and Safety* Lesson 1: Understanding the Science of Human Factors Human cognition, both conscious and unconscious processing, is prone to error in known ways. Human factors is an established science that uses many disciplines (such as anatomy, physiology, physics, and biomechanics) to understand how people perform under different circumstances. This course defines human factors as: the study of all the factors that make it easier to do the work in the right way. The science of human factors is particularly useful for understanding human behavior in safety-critical situations, such as providing health care. Issues that impact human performance and increase risk for error include the following: Factors that are in play before action takes place. These are predisposing mental and physiological states, such as fatigue, stress, dehydration, hunger, and boredom. Factors that directly enable decision making, such as perception, attention, memory, reasoning, and judgment. Factors that directly enable decision execution, such as communication and able to carry out the intended action. Lesson 2: Changes on Human Factors Design Principles The science of human factors — the study of the interrelationship between humans and their environment — has identified design principles that include the following: Simplify. Simplifying involves taking steps out of a process. Standardize. Standardizing removes variation and confusion and promotes predictability and consistency. Use forcing functions and constraints. Forcing functions make it impossible to do a task incorrectly. They create a hard stop that you cannot pass unless you change your actions. A constraint is the of being checked, restricted, or compelled to avoid or perform some action. Use redundancies. A typical redundancy is double-checking someone’s work. Avoid reliance on memory. Checklists are a valuable tool to reduce reliance on memory.
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