Using Human Factors Engineering to Improve Patient Safety, Second Edition (PDF book)

Available August 2010. 177 pages. PDF book. ISBN: 978-1-59940-526-1
Click here to view the table of contents and sample pages.

This PDF book is for individual use only. It cannot be forwarded to others or posted for unlimited access.

Edited by human factors engineering (HFE) experts John Gosbee, MD., M.S., and Laura Lin Gosbee, M.A.Sc.

Following other high-risk industries such as aviation and nuclear power, health care organizations have recently begun to pay attention to human-system interactions and how the design of systems either encourages or discourages errors. Using HFE can help “diagnose” and prevent adverse events, many with potentially life-threatening results. For this newly updated second edition, some of the top HFE experts in the United States and Canada tell how their organizations are deploying HFE to improve the safety and efficiency of care.

Using Human Factors Engineering to Improve Patient Safety: Problem Solving on the Front Line, Second Edition shows how health care organizations are using HFE as a powerful adjunct to their patient safety efforts.

Special Features

• Essentials of HFE principles and methods for physicians, nurses, risk managers, and other health care professionals
• Detailed case-study chapters on how five health care organizations and a medication safety organization use HFE strategies and solutions
• A chief executive officer’s account of how a series of medical errors pushed HFE to the “front burner”
• Advice on finding the HFE professional right for the organization and on how to train everyone, from the frontline staff to the corporate suite, to look for HFE issues
• Ways to build HFE-based design into medical device and equipment, workspaces, and care processes from the beginning

This book is an essential guide for how chief executive officers, chief operating officers, patient safety officers, physicians, nurses, risk managers, and performance improvement professionals around the world can use HFE to maximize patient safety and efficiency.

Praise for Using Human Factors Engineering to Improve Patient Safety: Problem Solving on the Front Line, Second Edition

This book provides an excellent introduction to human factors engineering (HFE) with a variety of useful teaching resources and informative case studies. Certainly it is useful for healthcare providers and clinical practitioners, who would benefit from the background and introductory materials, especially the advice on choosing human factors (HF) consultants or HF staff. Management in clinical settings would learn about the benefits of HF in their operations and might be motivated to hire some HF engineers to improve their patient-safety profile, something that’s occurring at more hospitals. Clinical engineers and biomeds would be better consumers of medical devices and systems from a usability and use-safety perspective after reading this book. HF engineers already in healthcare or thinking about a career change into the medical field would benefit from seeing how their skills could be applied to solving the challenging problems of medical accidents and adverse patient events.
—Edmond Israelski, Ph.D., C.H.F.P., Abbott Laboratories, Abbott Park, IL (Biomedical Instrumentation and Technology, Nov 2010, p. 474)

The book does an excellent job in introducing basic principles and methods of human factors engineering. Ample examples and case studies drawn from the literature and anecdotes from experts and leaders in the field provide a great insight for the readers who do not have much experience in the field regarding what it takes to incorporate human factors engineering into health care organizations. The high potential of human factors engineering in improving patient safety is particularly emphasized. The book’s inclusion of individual experiences concerning the human factors awareness levels in health care organizations and proposed methods to increase this awareness deserve high praise. Real-life examples indicating the variety of processes in an organization that can benefit from human factors engineering are also very informative. It is a great resource for clinicians and health care leaders to get acquainted with the field of human factors engineering in health care context. It can also be useful for human factors, biomedical engineering and health care administration students interested in a career focus in patient safety and/or medical device design. Human factors professionals interested in changing their career focus to health care will also appreciate the book as a realistic and concise overview of the field. A great addition to the human factors and patient safety library.
—Ayse P. Gurses, Ph.D., Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore (Human Factors & Ergonomics Society’s Health Care Technical Group Newsletter, Fall 2010, pp. 2–3)

This product is also offered as a hardcopy book.






Click here to access FREE Online Extras for this product!









If you would like a sales quote or proforma invoice for this product, please contact our Customer Service Department at jcrcustomerservice@pbd.com with your purchase details. Please include the title of the publication and your billing and shipping address. Customer service will reply to you between 8am to 8pm EST, Monday through Friday.

Item Number:
EBUHFE10

Price: $75.00 USD