Human Factors for Surgeons and Healthcare Professionals (online)

Human factors awareness and skills development is a vital element of surgical education.

Adverse incidents are an inevitable part of clinical practice. Human factors allows surgeons to manage errors before incidents occur, learn from adverse events, improve team performance and morale, and facilitate greater patient safety. In surgery, human factors is a broad and complex field that encompasses non-technical skills, safety science and system design. Human factors is a recognised generic professional competency (GPC) by the General Medical Council (GMC), Joint committee on Surgical Training (JSCT), and medical indemnity societies.

This course introduces key concepts in human factors in an engaging and accessible format, allowing learners to demonstrate a foundation in human factors knowledge, and improved confidence in a challenging and fast-growing skills area. Those with leadership responsibilities in a surgical team, as well as those who aspire to such positions, will benefit from human factors training. In doing so, surgeons and other health professionals will be better positioned to create effective, supportive and just clinical teams centred on patient safety.

This training comprises a suite of interactive e-learning sessions supported by real-life case studies to enable learners to apply principles to their practice. A portfolio certificate is provided following the short online assessment.

Topics include:

• Errors and just culture
• Situational awareness
• Threat and error management
• Effective communication
• Teamwork