Human Factors In Nursing

When an adverse incident occurs within healthcare, it is the duty of an investigator and healthcare regulator to investigate the any failings and hold the relevant healthcare professional responsible. Working as an investigator within the Nursing and Midwifery Council, my role is centred around public protection and investigating and holding registered nurses and midwives accountable for their misconduct, competency concerns and failings. A constant theme within investigations is the question of whether any patient harm occurred and the impact the incident had on a patient, although we rarely take into consideration the impact the incident had on the registrant, or how the lengthy fitness to practise proceedings create a period of uncertainty

I will explore the ways in which the Nursing and Midwifery Council have begun implementing changes to its processes in order to better consider human factors during investigations and distance itself from the punitive perception the NMC has with its nursing and midwifery registrants. I have chosen to explore this topic as human factors are challenging for healthcare regulators, particularly regulators like the NMC whom are focussed on the practise of an individual rather than the concerns within the wider systems. I believe as professional regulators, human factors need to be taken into consideration when investigating allegations in order to achieve more reliable and robust investigations, and with hope to achieve fairer outcomes for nurses and

System 1 is fast, automatic and operates almost subconsciously with little effort, such as the ability to recognize objects, whilst System 2 demands concentration, attention and often more logic when dealing with complex tasks (Kahneman, 2012). Healthcare professionals are often required to make quick decisions adopting a System 1 approach to thinking. Following an adverse incident in healthcare, it is easy to suggest a System 2 approach could have prevented the error in hindsight, particularly from the perspective of an investigator. Adopting methods such as normative rational decision making is ideal in theory, but has its limitations and is not always practical in everyday life and making fast decisions, particularly in a healthcare setting (Bazerman and Moore,