Human Factors in Maternity Services

Maternity services face unique challenges when it comes to patient safety. We work with dedicated professionals across clinical and non-clinical teams who provide the highest standards of care in women’s health. Our training supports these professionals by providing awareness of the human factors which can impact on safety outcomes.

Human factors is part of a scientific discipline that accepts and understands that humans are fallible, and draws on engineering, psychology, social and physical anthropology to design systems that make it easy for people to do the right thing and difficult, or impossible to do the wrong thing.

Our Human Factors training in maternity courses are designed to address safety issues by enhancing clinical performance through an understanding of the effects of teamwork, equipment, workspace, culture, and organisation on human behaviour in clinical settings. Our comprehensive training programme helps participants develop cohesive environments, build cultures where all personnel feel empowered to speak up if they suspect a problem, and equip them with non-technical skills that complement technical competency. We examine three aspects and how they can impact upon people’s behaviour and safety performance:

• The job: including areas such as the nature of the task, workload, the working environment, the design of displays and controls, and the role of procedures.
• The individual: including his/her competence, skills, personality, attitude, and risk perception.
• The organisation: including work patterns, the culture of the workplace, resources, communications and leadership.

The safety of patients should not solely rely on high levels of individual and team performance but should equally depend on well-designed systems that have been put in place to support those who provide maternity and neonatal care.

Our programmes have helped more than 100 NHS Trusts and other international healthcare organisations enhance their safety culture, improve teamwork, communication, and design of healthcare systems. Our courseware has been developed based on the principles and recommendations laid out in various landmark reports and documents including WHO Patient Safety guidance, the Ockenden Review, and the NHS Patient Safety Syllabus which focusses on preventing harm before it occurs and identifying risks and making them safe.

Using evidence-based examples of best practice, we facilitate discussions around current healthcare philosophies and policies such as a systems approach to patient safety, safety I and safety II and Martha’s Rule.

We offer courses in a range of formats to meet the individual needs of healthcare organisations, including online self-paced e-learning foundation courses, open training courses at our UK training centre, in-house bespoke courses for healthcare organisations, and instructor-led live online training via our learning management portal and web conferencing platform. Click the links below for more details on course programmes or contact us today to find out more about bespoke training within your organisation.

• Human Factors Foundation course
• Human Factors Managers course
• Human Factors Trainers course