Presentation

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Accelerating the Adoption of HFE in Hospitals: Models, Practices, and the Future

DescriptionBringing human factors expertise to hospital-based quality and safety work has gained increasing recognition in recent years.1,2 While individual human factors engineering (HFE) positions have emerged in a variety of departments in individual hospitals and health systems around the country, and a few larger programs have clusters of positions, these efforts largely remain as isolated instances rather than an industry standard. A number of challenges to achieving widespread adoption have been described in the literature including the difficulty of building a business case for positions, the need for establishing an improved understanding of the HFE skill set and optimal ways to embed HFE, and the need for HFEs to learn how to assimilate into the healthcare culture and change healthcare from inside the system.1,2 Recent efforts to increase adoption and support for embedded HFE include human factors groups (e.g. HFES healthcare technical group and Human Factors Transforming Health Network) and most recently efforts from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement through their HF certification program. This recently launched program seeks to establish a credentialing process for healthcare HFE to establish standards for HFE proficiency within healthcare (ihi.org). In this panel we bring together quality leaders recognizing the need for embedded HFE expertise with hospital based HFEs to discuss the current state and growth potential of hospital-based HFE and challenges and successes in their own journeys to establish and develop embedded HFE. The panelists will discuss a variety of topics including approaches to uncovering and addressing gaps in hospital leadership’s understanding of what HFE is and how it can benefit their organizations; approaches to introducing and justifying HFE employment lines within an organization and alternatives to full time HFE employees; lessons learned through developing embedded HFE programs; and their visions for what embedded HFE will look like in future decades. Recognizing economic pressures of many institutions, the panel will also discuss different approaches and models to establishing embedded HFE within a hospital or health system. This panel is intended to be relevant to a broad audience interested in hospital-based HFE including students interested in hospital-based work, current HFEs, clinicians, and hospital leadership. We will include significant time for audience questions and comments in addition to moderated discussion. By bringing together both quality leaders and human factors practitioners we provide a range of perspectives on the challenges and growth potential of embedded HFE.

1. Catchpole K, Bowie P, Fouquet S, Rivera J, Hignett S. Frontiers in human factors: embedding specialists in multi-disciplinary efforts to improve healthcare. Int J Qual Health Care. 2021 Jan 12;33(Supplement_1):13-18. doi: 10.1093/intqhc/mzaa108. PMID: 32901812; PMCID: PMC7499639.
2. Perry SJ, Catchpole K, Rivera AJ, Henrickson Parker S, Gosbee J. 'Strangers in a strange land': Understanding professional challenges for human factors/ergonomics and healthcare. Appl Ergon. 2021 Jul;94:103040. doi: 10.1016/j.apergo.2019.103040. Epub 2021 Mar 3. PMID: 33676061; PMCID: PMC8145749.

Moderator

Jessica Ray

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Panelists

James Hoffman

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

Josh Clark

Institute for Healthcare Improvement