Safety and Human Factors in the Operating Room

Abstract

E ffective decision-making, risk management, and teamwork are essential components of patient safety. Anesthesiologists work as part of a multidisciplinary team in a complex, stressful environment that has multiple distractions and is intolerant of errors. Frequent interaction is required with sophisticated medical equipment and personnel who have varying backgrounds and levels of education. As part of an ongoing effort to improve patient safety, numerous techniques have been adopted from the aviation industry in order to decrease the frequency and severity of critical events caused by human error. Anesthesiologists were among the first to adopt human factors, industrial engineering, and operations research as part of clinical practice, but other specialties soon followed. A recent editorial highlighted the growing body of articles on human factors in the medical literature—more than 140 papers on crisis resource management— demonstrating the growing level of interest in this topic. Research in the fields of safety and human factors continues to evolve, and current interests include the early detection of error-producing situations and the design of error-resistant systems. Using these well-developed tools for risk assessment, judgment, and decision-making may help to make the operating room a safer place.