Patient Safety / Simulation and Ergonomics

Distractions  Following a slight blogging holiday (bloggiday?) I thought it would be interesting to think about distractions - recently I helped deliver a human factors session at Walsall Manor Hospital, supporting a fantastic local Human Factors initiative that had seen a real culture change within the organisation.   The session I led was around distraction and cognition and allowed me over the day to start to draw together the discussions into some type of working model on how to reduce distractions.  The problem Fundamentally, I really do think that distractions are so commonplace in healthcare they are seen as the norm - to such an extent we are blind to them  how many times will the consultant in ED running the trauma call be asked to look at a 12 lead ECG for another patient in majors listen to the melee of alarms screaming for attention in a critical care area the staff member waiting slightly impatiently to discuss another patient while a clinician perform