Learning

The Eva team caught up with Jo Gillespie, former airline pilot and aviation safety expert, to discuss how understanding human factors has revolutionised the approach to safety in aviation. He suggests that now is the time for healthcare to learn lessons from other industries to improve operational performance and patient safety. Tell us about the […]

In the late 1940s following WWII there were two significant influences on commercial cockpit culture. What followed changed aviation safety forever and would eventually inform our understanding of how to manage the impact of a patient safety incident. The first was a result of the massive wartime technology spike, taking planes higher and faster than

First let’s clear up the difference between human factors and human performance. Human performance is all about how and why people do what they do. Human factors is the science which applies what we know about that ‘how and why’ to the design of machines, equipment, work environments, procedures and anything else involving human interaction.

Firstly I should make it clear that I am not a psychologist nor in the truest sense of the word am I a scientist, although as an aviator I have a broad understanding of a lot of science. My knowledge of cognitive dissonance, in particular, comes from extensive research into why pilots were flying approaches