Patient safety should be the key aim at the heart of any healthcare system, including the NHS. Yet we know that every single day, patients come to avoidable harm as a result of errors and mistakes. Human Factors and CRM have become increasingly common schools of thought after the tragic Elaine Bromley case.

This month we look at the Human Factors at play in a pre-hospital RTC case study and consider how ambulance clinicians and first responders might be affected by these. We discuss Startle and Suprise, Amigdyla highjack, Bandwidth, Leadership and heirarchies within teams, communication skills and graduated language.

There aren’t mountains of references this month, as much of what we discussed was personal opinion and reflection from experience.

References:

1- https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/EASA_Research_Startle_Effect_Managements_Final_Report.pd

2 - Fioratou & Glavin, 2010. Anaesthesia 65 (1):61-69

3- https://www.aviation-professional.net/2021/05/The-SHEL-Model-A-Basic-Aid-to-Understand-Human-Factors-in-Aviation.html

4 - https://www.hse.ie/eng/about/who/qid/leadershipquality/challenging-unsafe-behaviours-presentation.pdf

5 - https://chfg.org/what-are-clinical-human-factors/