10.1177/1062860605283932Gawron et alMedical Error and Human Factors Engineering Medical Error and Human Factors Engineering: Where Are We Now?

The goal of human factors engineering is to opti-mize the relationship between humans and systems bystudyinghumanbehavior,abilities,and limitations and using this knowledge to design systems for safe and effective human use. With the assumption that the human component of any system will inevitably produce errors, human factors engineers design sys-tems and human/machine interfaces that are robust enoughtoreduceerrorratesandtheeffectof the inev-itable error within the system. In this article, we re-view the extent and nature of medical error and then discusshuman factors engineering tools that havepo-tential applicability. These tools include taxonomies of human and system error and error data collection and analysis methods. Finally, we describe studies that have examinedmedical error, and on the basis of these studies, present conclusions about how human factors engineering can significantly reduce medical errorsandtheireffects. (AmJMedQual2006;21:57-67