Who should attend

This course is ideal for anyone who is interested in patient safety, quality improvement and Human Factors. Specifically, the course is aimed at:

• Physicians
• Nurses
• Pharmacists
• Allied health practitioners
• Health service managers
• Quality and Safety managers
• Researchers

What you will learn

On completion of this course participants will be able to:

• Explain human factors principles and approaches to healthcare quality and safety.
• Explain the key features of effective teamwork.
• Understand human factors problems involved in medication safety.
• Identify safety risks of medical devices and the role of design and usability in reducing risks.
• Explain the limitations of learning from incident reporting and understand alternative approaches.
• Explain how Human Factors professionals can help to understand and improve staff physical and mental safety.
• Understand the Human Factors challenges involved in everyday care and actions for implementing Human Factors principles in the workplace.

Program structure

Seven course modules will be offered in this course, which are released on a weekly basis.

There are no assessments for this short course.

Course Modules:

• Module 1: Introduction to Human Factors in Healthcare
• Module 2: Teams, leadership and communication
• Module 3: Medication Safety
• Module 4: Devices and Technology
• Module 5: Incident reporting and learning from the error
• Module 6: Staff safety
• Module 7: Case study

Prof Janet Anderson

Course Director

Janet Anderson is Professor of Human Factors in the Department of Anaesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at Monash University, an honorary professor at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She has held academic positions at University of Surrey (2004-2008), King’s College London (2008-2020), and City, University of London (2020-2021). She is a long-standing member of the UK Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors and was the leader of the Healthcare Special Interest Group in 2013-16. The aim of her research is to improve the quality and safety of care using Human Factors theories and frameworks. She is an expert in resilient healthcare systems, organisations and teams and has pioneered the development of theories, methods and guidance in this area.

Mr Garry Mann

Course Facilitator

Garry Mann is a Human Factors Research Assistant at the Department of Anaesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at Monash University, and member of Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (US). He graduated from the University of Queensland (2019) and University of Technology, Sydney (2012) and has a strong interest in cognitive psychology and decision making. His Honours thesis investigated the ability of non-clinicians to comprehend novel speech-based alarm sounds while performing simultaneous linguistic or spatial tasks. His current work focuses on quality and safety improvement for healthcare workers and patients, with an emphasis on perioperative care. Garry previously worked as an analytical chemist, specialising in radiochemistry and has a keen interest in forensic science.

Dr Raphaela Schnittker

Adjunct Lecturer

Raphaela Schnittker currently works at Safer Care Victoria (Victoria, Australia) as a Human Factors Specialist. She is also an Adjunct Lecturer at the Department of Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine at Monash University. Raphaela holds a PhD in Human Factors from Monash University as well as a Masters degree in Human Factors Psychology and a Bachelors degree in Psychology from the University of Twente (Enschede, the Netherlands). Raphaela has worked in applying Human Factors science to healthcare settings for the last ten years, both in Academia and government.

https://www.clinicalhumanfactors.org.au/