Error Management

The largest risk to safety is the human in the system. The collecting and analysing of error, near-miss and potential hazard data will result in the ability to mitigate risk and implement the actions required to manage them. This will form the foundations of an organisation’s safety improvement and error investigation process.

Error management is a practical application using the theoretical knowledge of Human Factors. It utilises knowledge, tools, and a framework to enable organisations to identify types of errors occurring within them enabling the management of risk.

“If organisations can learn from low consequence/high probability events and addresses issues in behaviours and culture it will ultimately increase patient safety.”

 Error Management Systems create the capability to:

• Reduce error inducing situations
• Improve defences against human error
• Promote effective risk-based decisions

 Error management philosophy:

• Human error is normal in all organisations
• Identify the different human error types and their causes
• Simple to use systems that encourage error reporting
• Understand and manage human-in-the-system risk
• Establish proactive data for risk-based decision-making
• Build robust and quality reporting trends
• Monitor skills drift – understanding people’s requirements to produce.