Pediatrics Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Pediatrics, including details on child development, perinatal medicine, child health care.

Human factors engineering and patient safety.

Scanlon MC, Karsh BT, Densmore EM

Department of Pediatrics, Division of Critical Care, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA. mscanlon@mcw.edu

The pediatric population has features different from those of adults and that are dynamic during the pediatric age range. Pediatric-specific issues result in potential risks for harm during medical care. Basic and applied human factors research has resulted in improvements in the performance of health adults and those adults who have functional limitations. Future work should focus on systematically understanding the human factors needs of children with the goal of redesigning systems of health care to optimize the safety of children and the performance of their care providers.

Published 27 November 2006 in Pediatr Clin North Am, 53(6): 1105-19.
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