- An overview of human factors research in the workplace
- How human factors research affects patient care and outcomes
- A time-lapse video showing how Carilion's Human Factors research team helped to design our new tower's trauma bays
We spend a significant part of our waking lives at work.
Whether we sit at a desk, stand behind a counter or are in constant motion at work, the design, processes and communications we use can be improved by the application of human factors science. And when the workplace is a health care facility, ensuring it functions at its best means ensuring the quality of care patients receive is also at its best.
Human factors can be found where at the intersection of psychology and engineering. It draws from a wide range of specialties to analyze how work is done and optimize both the processes and the work environments themselves for resilient and safe use.
The goal of human factors research is understanding the capacities and limitations of people at work. Human factors engineers study, for example, how long someone can monitor a screen without becoming distracted (vigilance task) or how long it takes them to find a particular shape or label among several that look the same (visual scanning task).
Try it out yourself! These links showcase projects that use human factors science to measure, and better understand, human performance:
- Mackworth Clock Test: vigilance task
- Orange T Test: visual scanning task
By understanding how workers perform, human factors engineers can design workspaces to be user-friendly and intuitive. They can also redesign computer screens to provide better, more actionable data in a way that is easy to read and hard to misunderstand. They can apply design rules and ergonomics—the design of workplaces and systems to fit the people who use them—to make devices easier to use.
Human Factors in Health Care
In health care, human factors takes on an added level of importance. Carilion’s Human Factors Center of Excellence team studies the design of our clinical environments to understand how those designs affect not only employee safety, but also patient safety, the delivery of care and—ultimately—patient outcomes.
The Human Factors team approaches problems with a “systems perspective,” collaborating with various departments to work together toward Carilion’s goals of:
- Providing high-quality care with the best possible outcomes
- Minimizing waste and the cost of both giving and receiving care
- Optimizing the experience for patients and their care teams
Redesigning Trauma Care
Our Human Factors research team studies both existing and new environments throughout the Carilion footprint. Recent projects include the endoscopy center at Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital and the design of Carilion Children’s at Tanglewood.
Most recently, Human Factors has taken a hands-on approach to support our Level 1 trauma center.
As the only Level 1 trauma center in the region, Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital treats the most critically injured patients in central and southern Virginia. To meet the growing need for trauma and emergency care in our region, we are relocating our flagship hospital’s Emergency Department to a new tower currently being built adjacent to the existing building.
In trauma care, every second a process takes matters, and every step taken by our Trauma-Surgical Critical Care team counts. Watch the video above to see how our Human Factors team was able to identify potential design challenges in the new trauma bays before the Crystal Spring tower is even completed.
The data-driven design adjustments to the tower design proposed by Human Factors will save steps, streamline supply levels and enhance effective communication to ensure the best possible outcomes for patients.
The simulation was conducted at Carilion’s Center for Simulation, Research and Patient Safety (Sim Lab), where Human Factors is located.
Learn more about our Human Factors research team.
