Using human factors principles to redesign a 3D lab workflow during the COVID-19 pandemic.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Like most hospitals, our hospital experienced COVID-19 pandemic-related supply chain shortages. Our additive manufacturing lab's capacity to offset these shortages was soon overwhelmed, leading to a need to improve the efficiency of our existing workflow. We undertook a work system analysis guided by the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) construct which is based on human factors and quality improvement principles. Our objective was to understand the inefficiencies in project submission, review, and acceptance decisions, and make systematic improvements to optimize lab operations.

Methods

Contextual inquiry (interviews and workflow analysis) revealed suboptimal characteristics of the system, specifically, reliance on a single person to facil

SUBMITTER: Larsen EP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9655797 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature