Adverse events involving medical devices or equipment can lead to serious problems, including incorrect or delayed diagnosis and treatment or patient injuries, a new article posted on the FDA website emphasizes. When errors involving medical devices recur repeatedly, people typically blame the users instead of the real culprit, which is often a poorly designed interface between the medical device and the user. Human factors is the science that focuses on understanding and supporting how people interact with technology, according to the article first published in the June edition of Nursing2008.

In healthcare, the objective of human factors is to improve human performance with medical products, including medical devices, and to reduce the likelihood of error or injury, thus improving patient and workplace safety. In this article, the author-Suzanne Rich, RN-discusses some common problems and steps you can take to prevent them.

The complexity and diversity of medical devices used simultaneously contribute to human factors errors. A key objective of human factors in medical device design is to enhance the likelihood of good performance under less-than-ideal conditions. To minimize human factors problems, devices should be designed according to users' needs, abilities, limitations, and work environments. This includes the design of the device's user interface, which includes controls, displays, software, labels, and instructions-anything the user may need to operate and maintain a device.
Good design should include:

* operation that's intuitive and doesn't require frequent reference to an instruction manual
* easy-to-read displays
* easy-to-use controls
* appropriate connections of device-todevice and device-to-outlet for safe use
* effective alarms
* easy repair and maintenance.

To view the complete article, visit www.fda.gov/cdrh/medicaldevicesafety/tipsarticles/humanfactors.html

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