Human Factors Analysis of Latent Safety Threats in a Pediatric Critical Care Unit*

CONCLUSIONS: Latent safety threats span various pediatric critical care activities and are attributable to many underlying work system factors. Latent safety threats are present both when staff comply with and deviate from policies and protocols, suggesting that simply reinforcing compliance with existing policies and protocols, the common default intervention imposed by healthcare organizations, will be insufficient to mitigate safety threats. Rather, interventions must be designed to address the underlying work system threats. This human factors informed framework analysis of observational data is a useful approach to identifying and understanding latent safety threats and can be used in other clinical work systems.
Source: Pediatric Critical Care Medicine - Category: Pediatrics Tags: Feature Articles Source Type: research