Incident Investigations

Human factors methods play an essential role in understanding the associated technical, process, environmental, and system-related issues in an incident investigation.

The Healthcare Human Factors Group helps healthcare organizations investigate device-related incidents to identify issues that contributed to the incident and to recommend corrective actions to prevent recurrence.

In particular, root cause analysis is a tool that can help promote a comprehensive review of the contributing factors to an incident to ensure risk reduction strategies are identified, implemented, and evaluated. Other tools, such as Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA), may be used to proactively avoid incidents by identifying where potential errors may arise so steps may be taken to prevent, eliminate or minimize these risks before they occur.