Health Care Comes Home The Human Factors (2011) / Chapter Skim
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3 What Is Human Factors?
3 What Is Human Factors?
Pages 61-74
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From page 61... ...
This report is designed to call attention to the resulting missed opportunities and the great potential advantages of bringing a human factors approach into the center of planning for high-quality and safe home health care. In this chapter, we discuss some of the tools and methods of human 61
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From page 62... ...
: • Age, Education • Gender • Ethnicity • Self-Efficacy • Health Status • Socioeconomic Status • Knowledge and Skills • Communication Skills • Technical Competence • Health Literacy • Health Care Beliefs • Health Care Readiness Tasks Tasks: FIGURE 3-1 Model of human factors of health care in the home. SOURCE: Czaja and Nair [adapted from3-1.epsal.
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From page 63... ...
The man performing the task may have low health literacy, visual problems, and some mild cognitive impairment, and his caregiver may be his wife, who is close to him in age. The person components of the interactions may also include a nurse at a distant clinic who monitors the medical data of the care recipient via telemonitoring1 and a nurse and home health aide who visit weekly to check on the general health status of the care recipient, measure his vital signs, and assist with personal care.
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From page 64... ...
These risks could be avoided or minimized and the chances for success maximized with the integration of human factors considerations into the design of the system. HUMAN FACTORS METHODS Research Methods Human factors specialists often engage in research to gain a basic understanding of or new knowledge about people and behavior.
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From page 65... ...
The research protocol is likely to entail assessing the cognitive abilities of study participants using standard measures of cognition; having the participants perform a sample set of health information search tasks; asking the participants to rate the level of difficulty of the tasks and identify the sources of difficulty; and examining the relationship between the measures of cognition and measures of performance (e.g., task duration or errors)
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From page 66... ...
This repeated prototyping, testing, and revisiting of the design, shown by the recursive arrows in Figure 3-2, is the best way to ensure good fit with user needs, expectations, and capabilities. Even after the product or system is marketed, it is useful to solicit and analyze feedback on it from users to inform updates or new designs.2 User and Environment Analyses The design of a system or equipment/technology generally begins with an analysis of the potential user groups (which may include care recipients, informal and formal caregivers, and professional health care providers)
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From page 67... ...
Gathering this information might involve conducting interviews with potential users to understand their goals and objectives with respect to a particular system or system component, such as a device, where it will be used, how often it will be used, experiences with similar devices, etc. It is important to recognize that, for health care in the home, the users are heterogeneous and include people who engage in self-care or receive care and both lay and professional caregivers who vary widely in their skills, abilities, and characteristics (see Chapter 2)
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From page 68... ...
The success of task analysis applied to health care in the home depends on the analyst's human factors expertise, domain knowledge regarding health care and health management in the home, accurate knowledge and descriptions of activities and activity requirements, and knowledge of user capabilities and other characteristics.
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From page 69... ...
This may initially include review of the existing literature, data compendiums, and design standards and guidelines. Several peer-reviewed journals are devoted to the topic of human factors, including Human Factors, Human Factors in Manufacturing, Ergonomics, Applied Ergonomics, Ergonomics in Design, International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, Journal of Cognitive Engineering and
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From page 70... ...
For example, human factors methods can be used to determine workflow, to coordinate work, to maintain scheduling and communication protocols, and to determine work requirements to ensure worker productivity, safety, and health. Human factors can have input into the broader organizational environment to help design and implement safety programs, certification protocols, or program evaluation methods.
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From page 71... ...
For example, such errors could include lapses in performing health promotion and disease prevention behaviors, not adhering to a prescribed treatment, ignoring warning signs of complications, and not sharing important information about health history, symptoms, or response to treatment with caregivers. Other examples include potentially life-threatening events, such as misreading output from health monitoring equipment, altering equipment settings, turning off alarms, sustaining injuries due to poor body mechanics during lifting and transfers, or continuing intravenous (IV)
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From page 72... ...
In summary, applying human factors knowledge and techniques to the design of health care systems intended for use in the home can make the systems safer, more effective, and more efficient. By optimizing the relationships among the people, the health care tasks and technologies, and the environments in which health care occurs and ensuring that the demands placed on users by the system are within those individuals' capabilities, these goals can be achieved.
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From page 73... ...
. Patient safety, potential adverse drug events, and medical device design: A human factors engineering approach.
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From page 74... ...
. Investigating the roles of knowledge and cognitive abilities in older adult information seeking on the web.
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