Human factors in general practice: early thoughts on the educational focus for specialty training and beyond

McKay, John; Pickup, Laura; Atkinson, Sarah; McNab, Duncan; Bowie, Paul

Abstract

In the third article in the series, we describe the outputs from a series of roundtable discussions by Human Factors experts and General Practice (GP) Educational Supervisors tasked with examining the GP (family medicine) training and work environments through the lens of the systems and designed-centred discipline of Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE). A prominent issue agreed upon proposes that the GP setting should be viewed as a complex sociotechnical system from a care service and specialty training perspective. Additionally, while the existing GP specialty training curriculum in the United Kingdom (UK) touches on some important HFE concepts, we argue that there are also significant educational gaps that could be addressed (e.g. physical workplace design, work organisation, the design of procedures, decision-making and human reliability) to increase knowledge and skills that are key to understanding workplace complexity and interactions, and supporting everyday efforts to improve the performance and wellbeing of people and organisations. Altogether we propose and illustrate how future HFE content could be enhanced, contexualised and integrated within existing training arrangements, which also serves as a tentative guide in this area for continuing professional development for the wider GP and primary care teams.

Citation

McKay, J., Pickup, L., Atkinson, S., McNab, D., & Bowie, P. (2016). Human factors in general practice: early thoughts on the educational focus for specialty training and beyond. Education for Primary Care, 27(3), 162-171. https://doi.org/10.1080/14739879.2016.1181533

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 19, 2016
• Online Publication Date: May 13, 2016
• Publication Date: Jul 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Sep 6, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 6, 2016
• Journal: Education for Primary Care
• Print ISSN: 1473-9879
• Electronic ISSN: 1473-9879
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 27
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 162-171
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14739879.2016.1181533
• Keywords: Human factors, ergonomics, general practice, specialty training, medical education, patient safety, human performance, quality improvement
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/792140
• Publisher URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14739879.2016.1181533?af=R&journalCode=tepc20
• Additional Information: The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in Education for Primary Care 2016 http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14739879.2016.1181533