Year 4 MBBS Interprofessional Education Guide

Appendix 1: Human Factors

Human factors have a major impact on any professional and interprofessional activity. A definition of human factors from the UK Health and Safety Executive: “Human factors refer to environmental, organisational and job factors and human and individual characteristics which influence behaviour at work in a way that can affect health and safety.” “In other words, human factors is concerned with:

• what people are being asked to do (the task and its characteristics),
• who is doing it (the individual and their competence) and
• where they are working (the organisation and its attributes),

All of these are influenced by the wider societal concern, both local and national.”

http://www.hse.gov.uk/humanfactors/introduction.htm accessed June 2014

These three domains are illustrated by John Adair as: Task, Team and Individual – in a figure that notes the overlap or interactions between each element.

Fig 1. John Adair's "Action-Centred Leadership