Designing Impactful Human Factors Research Programs in Healthcare

Abstract

Several human factors (HF) research studies conducted by HumanEra, our research team, generated interest from the healthcare community and appeared to have strong impact on clinical practice. We believe these studies demonstrated valuable characteristics that could support HF professionals devise research programs that translate findings into clinical practice more effectively, and thereby improve patient safety. Three characteristics were identified, including 1) sustained project funding from an organization with broad jurisdictional responsibilities so that the research has broader system applicability, 2) the presence of a multidisciplinary advisory group to validate findings and engage key stakeholders to later champion the study findings into the healthcare system and 3) the use of multiple methods that build toward implementation efforts. Our studies have resulted in guidance, and other tools, for stakeholders across the healthcare system, including national regulatory organizations, manufacturers, healthcare institutions, clinical educators, clinicians and patients. They have also spurred major areas of ongoing work and funding for our team. We believe that the tendency for our work to trigger additional studies of this type is because funders recognize that proactive and exploratory risk assessment has tremendous value in preventing or reducing patient harm and associated downstream costs. We hope other teams will be able to utilize our experiences to enhance their research efforts and build the profile of HF in healthcare to further support this work.