Nursing and Engineering: Human Factors, Device Design and the Systems That Make Errors Likely

Course Purpose

This course applies principles of human factors engineering to identify and address design failures, differentiate between slips and mistakes to optimize checklist use, standardize handoff and teamwork practices, engage in root cause analysis, foster high reliability thinking and a just culture, and consider how the work environment impacts staffing, workload, fatigue, and simulation.

Continuing Education Credit Designation

This educational activity is credited for 5 contact hours at completion of the activity.

Overview

This course applies principles of human factors engineering to identify and address design failures, differentiate between slips and mistakes to optimize checklist use, standardize handoff and teamwork practices, engage in root cause analysis, foster high reliability thinking and a just culture, and consider how the work environment impacts staffing, workload, fatigue, and simulation.

Objectives

Upon completion of this independent study, the learner will be able to:

1. Define human factors engineering as the retrieved primer defines it, and list what a human factors engineer examines when analysing a clinical task.
2. Explain three documented design failures involving look-alike containers and incompatible equipment, identifying the design feature at fault in each.
3. Describe what a workaround is, why the retrieved primer says workarounds arise, and why a workaround is evidence about a system rather than only about a person.
4. Explain forcing functions and standardisation as design strategies, using the retrieved examples of each.
5. State the retrieved alert and alarm burden figures and explain the mechanism the primer gives for alert fatigue.
6. List the mitigation strategies the retrieved primer offers for alert fatigue, including tiering and specificity.
7. Describe the five rights of medication administration, the four additional rights that were proposed, and why the retrieved primer says the five rights do not ensure safety alone.
8. State the retrieved observed error-rate ranges for medication administration overall, for intravenous administration and in the home.
9. Distinguish slips from mistakes and explain which type of failure a checklist is suited to reduce.
10. Explain what the retrieved primer says checklist implementation requires beyond producing the list itself.
11. Describe the purpose of root cause analysis and the difference between active and latent errors.
12. Name the five characteristic ways of thinking in a high reliability organisation and describe how near misses are treated.
13. Explain just culture's three categories of behaviour and how the response to an event is determined.
14. Describe the elements of a standardised handoff and the environment the retrieved primer says effective handoffs require.
15. Explain how staffing, workload, turnover and fatigue enter safety analysis, and state the retrieved setting-dependent ratio examples.
16. Recognise the boundary between raising a design concern through governance and altering a device or configuration directly.

Who this course is for:

Advanced Practice Registered Nurses, registered nurses, licensed practical or vocational nurses, and other healthcare providers in any setting who want continuing education on Nursing and Engineering: Human Factors, Device Design and the Systems That Make Errors Likely.

Course outline

12 sections · finish in any order across devices

1. 1

   Course overview and learning objectives

2. 2

   Introduction

3. 3

   What Human Factors Engineering Actually Is

4. 4

   Workarounds, Forcing Functions and the Design Toolkit

5. 5

   Alarms, Alerts and the Arithmetic of Attention

6. 6

   The Medication Process, From Order to Bedside

7. 7

   Slips, Mistakes and What Checklists Can and Cannot Do

8. 8

   Handoffs and Teams: Designing the Transfer of Responsibility

9. 9

   Learning From Failure: Root Cause Analysis, High Reliability and Just Culture

10. 10

    Designing the Work: Staffing, Workload, Fatigue and Rehearsal

11. 11

    Nursing Considerations

12. 12

    Conclusion

This Course Satisfies

Requirement summaries come from our state requirement records. All Users of Fast CE For Less’s website and content are responsible for knowing their state’s license and renewal requirements.

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