Human Factors – reducing errors in maternity care
Human factors is about understanding human limitations and designing the workplace and the equipment we use to allow for variations in humans and human performance. Knowing how fatigue, stress, poor communication and inadequate knowledge and skill affect health professionals is important because it helps us understand predisposing characteristics that may be associated with adverse events and errors.
- understand that human factors is on the national midwifery agenda .Ā
- understand the main human factors
- learn from examples of human factor errors in maternity
Learner feedback:
“I enjoyed this course and felt the links to other resources and other organisations resources were very useful. The case studies were relevant to midwifery and involved very realistic scenarios. This aided learning as they were relatable.”
“I have been in the NHS for 46 years (43 as a midwife). As I was carefully going through the contents of the module I was distracted by memories of actual cases throughout my career and valuating why they had happened. This course should be taught on day 1 of anybody entering a nursing/medical environment. I consider myself capable of dealing with team issues, however this shows human nature and its possible impacts. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Very interesting topic. Scenarios were very good, allowed one to think and problem solve.”
“The content was clear and concise and informative and helpful for planning strategies for future working and understanding past and current situations and events.”
Study time: 1 hour 30 minutes
This course includes eight videos of between 0:46 and 18 mins duration.
Original content: 2020