Editors of New JCR Book on Human Factors Engineering Discuss Recent Work

• 9/4/2010
• Author: Steven Berman
• Category: The Journal Blog
• 6335 Views
• 0 Comments
• 

This week, John W. Gosbee, M.D., M.S., and Laura Lin Gosbee, M.A.Sc., editors of a new JCR book, Using Human Factors Engineering to Improve Patient Safety: Problem Solving on the Front Line, Second Edition, and longtime contributors to the Journal, discuss their recent work. You can reach the Gosbees at info@redforestconsulting.com.

Using Human Factors Engineering to Improve Patient Safety: Problem Solving on the Front Line, Second Edition, provides health care organizations with information that can help them to “jump start” the use human factors engineering (HFE) in their patient safety efforts.  There is a customized primer about the essentials of HFE principles and methods for physicians, nurses, risk managers, and other health care professionals. In addition, case-study chapters provide ready-made templates on how to train your work force, who to hire, and what kind of problems and projects are impacted.

Recently, both of us have continued to apply our own lessons.  Laura is working with applied researchers in Toronto to evaluate the effectiveness of various methods for differentiating look-alike drug names.  This work is similar to an FDA public workshop in June on effective methods for validating improvements to drug labeling and packaging.  As panelist, John provided his input on types and timing of HFE methods.  John continued in his sixth year as instructor for a University of Wisconsin summer course on teaching HFE to health care personnel, where the class was filled again with nurses, pharmacists, doctors, and biomedical engineers from around the country.  We continue to value the importance of collaborating with clinicians.  One of Laura’s recent collaborations resulted in a paper in Critical Care Medicine on HFE aspects of infection control to be published this month.  

We hope you enjoy the book. Read more about it here. Let us know what you think of it by posting below or by sending us an email.