Understanding Human Capabilities and Limitations

Before we go on and discuss Human Factors and its relevance to dentistry, we must first establish an understanding of the capabilities and limitations of humans. 

Watch the following video 

Whodunnit (youtube.com)

Did you notice any of the changes that happened during the course of this Whodunnit scene?

This video highlights the limitations of our situational awareness.

Situational awareness your ability to perceive and understand what is happening around you and how it might affect you in the near future. If you’ve started driving you might be familiar with the importance of situational awareness to road safety. It is no different in healthcare, it is very important to be aware of not only the task you are concentrating on but also everything that is happening round about you. IF you can do that you will improve patient safety and reduce the level or risk. Situational awareness involves:

• Perception: Recognising what’s happening
• Understanding: Grasping the potential implications of what is happening 
• Projection: Being able to anticipate what might happen next and how to respond 

These are described in this article from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons as

• What?
• So What?
• Now What?

Most of you will have missed many of the changes made during the Whodunnit video. This is completely normal. In any one moment we are gathering and processing a large number of different information from our surrounding environment. Once we gather this information, we must then make sense of it. If we don’t receive all of the information, we can never hope to make sense of it. 

There is a limit on how much information we can hold in our mind at one time. Some have suggested 5-7 pieces of information at one time. Factors such as stress, dehydration and lack of sleep can decrease that capacity to retain information.

 Think about your brain as a bucket – a bucket can only take so much before it overflows. Stress, fatigue, hunger, distractions and interruptions can all add to the bucket reducing the amount of information we can process at one time.

The point is, we are all human and even though we can be trained to communicate better, improve our recall of information or deal more effectively with stressful situations etc – we will always be prone to error.

As the famous poet Alexander Pope noted 

‘To err is human, to forgive divine’ 

This quote gives a further insight into how critical incidents are managed in healthcare. It is well recognised that generally healthcare professionals will try to do the right thing and their best for patients and usually when errors do occur they are a product of system design or a failure of systems or protocols to operate as they should.