Within the last 15 years, there has been an increasing emphasis on the use of human factors engineering theories, principles, and methods in health care. This presentation will describe how human factors and systems engineering can be used to improve health care based on examples from several federally-funded research projects. We will first describe our efforts to care transitions between hospital units (e.g., from Emergency Department to Intensive Care Units) and from hospital to home (with or without home care or transitional care services). We will then provide examples of how human factors engineering principles and methods are increasingly being used to improve infection prevention and control in health care settings.
