Patient Safety in Radiology (2025)-Human Factors Engineering

Video Transcription

Video Summary

Dr. McCarthy, Executive Vice Chair of Quality and Safety at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, discusses improving healthcare safety using human factors engineering (HFE). HFE optimizes human interaction with processes and equipment, anticipating errors common due to fatigue, communication, workload, and environment. Proven tools like checklists, alerts, and automation reduce errors and improve outcomes in radiology but face resistance due to perceived inefficiency, cultural barriers, and resource limits. With radiologists facing increasing workloads and cognitive demands, adopting HFE system solutions is critical. Although healthcare lags behind aviation's safety improvements, embracing cultural change and system redesign can enhance patient safety substantially.

Keywords

standard work

Toyota Way

continuous improvement

employee empowerment

process efficiency

human factors engineering

healthcare safety

radiology errors

patient safety

system redesign