Human Factors Engineering in the Department of Veterans Affairs

Abstract

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system currently includes 152 medical centers, with at least one in each state, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. VA operates more than 1,400 sites of care, including 909 ambulatory care and community-based outpatient clinics, 135 community living centers (nursing homes), 47 residential rehabilitation treatment programs, 232 Veterans Centers and 108 comprehensive home-care programs. In 2010, the system supported 75.6 million outpatient visits and 679,000 inpatient admissions.^{1, 2}

In 1999, the VA National Center for Patient Safety (NCPS) was established to lead the VA’s patient safety efforts and to develop a culture of healthcare safety throughout the Veterans Health Administration. The NCPS program promotes the use of human factors engineering methods that focus on how users interact with technology. Within the Department of Veterans Affairs various organizations have expanded the use of human factors engineering methods as a key element in addressing patient safety from a systems-based perspective. These entities include a range of groups that work in operational and research domains to identify and mitigate root causes of error with traditional medical devices and healthcare information technology to reduce the likelihood of patient harm while continuing to enhance and advance the design of healthcare tools and environments.

The expertise of the panel members includes human factors and biomedical engineering, cognitive psychology, information science, healthcare information technology and informatics, and clinical knowledge of medical technology and nursing. Each panelist will briefly introduce the organization they work in, provide an overview of their human factors activities, and briefly describe example(s) of specific projects, with emphasis on the benefit or lessons learned via these activities. Attendees will learn strategies to apply human factors engineering in healthcare and deepen their understanding of human performance challenges in this domain.