Centre of Excellence in Healthcare Human Factors
On World Patient Safety Day on 17 September 2026, EMHS formally launched its Centre of Excellence in Healthcare Human Factors.
Its role is to embed safety concepts from other safety critical industries like mining and aviation into healthcare operations, supporting EMHS to build more resilient health systems that protect staff and patients from harm.
The scientific discipline of Human Factors relates to everything from safer prescribing practices to communicating well in diverse interdisciplinary teams and designing effective rosters and workspaces.
A first for the western pacific, the Centre takes a collaborative approach alongside local and international experts in Human Factors, advocating for a contemporary safety culture.
Meet the staff at the clinician-led Centre: Coordinator Christelle Auffray, Director Dr Thy Do and Manager Erin Bridson.
Four areas of focus
RPH has offered Human Factors training since 2017 and the formal opening of the Centre expands its reach into four areas of focus:
- Research and innovation – realise collaborative national and global research relationships to conduct study in areas of relevance or challenge to EMHS
- Education - deliver structured and standardised training in core foundational topics to frontline operational healthcare staff
- Safety skills – develop formative assessments and simulation-based exercises for capacity building of human factors competencies using behavioural markers
- Human Factors and ergonomics – conduct local targeted and strategic clinical services improvement projects at all EMHS sites
Be sure to engage with the Centre staff and consider how Human Factors can be applied in your own clinical areas.
The aim is to design healthcare services so staff in hospitals can better anticipate, adapt and recover safely from unexpected challenges. In an era of tight health budgets, an ageing population and high demand on our hospitals, safety of our staff and patients must sit at the forefront of decision-making.
Clinicians intuitively recognise the contribution that human factors play in the outcome of many critical processes that occur in healthcare hundreds of times each day. Guidance from the Centre clinicians will help formalise that understanding through standardized and structured training.
When the Nexus foundational training in Healthcare Human Factors was established in 2017, it was a first for Australia. The course has since been accredited by several medical and nursing professional colleges. RPH has since trained more than 4,500 healthcare staff.
Be sure to engage with the Centre staff and consider how Human Factors can be applied in your own clinical areas.
The World Health Organisation defines patient safety as:
“a framework of organised activities that creates cultures, processes, procedures, behaviours, technology and environment in health care that consistently and sustainably lower risks, reduces the occurrence of avoidable harm, make errors less likely and reduces the impact of harm when it does occur.”
Training dates for 2027 are being finalised and will be published here once available.
We welcome inquiries from:
- EMHS staff.
- People outside of our hospitals.
Please email your interest to this address.
About the course
Attend the course in three sessions to complete all nine modules and translate your new learning tools and strategies into your workplace.
Level 1
- Awareness – why Human Factors are important in healthcare.
- Communication – tools and strategies to strengthen your communication.
- Teamwork – understanding the pitfalls of team dynamics.
Level 2
- Leadership and followership – the importance of this training in healthcare.
- Workload management – understanding the task causes of workload.
- Generational culture – breaking down the negative stereotypes of each generation to optimise team performance.
- Error management – defining, understanding and classifying errors.
Level 3
- Human Performance/fatigue management – learn how you can manage your biggest limiting factor in human performance.
- Situational awareness – how it’s built, lost and retrieved.
- Automation management – human vs technology centred design. What are the implications for the Healthcare industry?
- Decision-making – intuitive and analytical. Learn a structured method for decision making.
We offer two fellowships every six months to contribute to a safer and more effective clinical practice at EMHS and across the broader health system.
The ANZCA Healthcare Human Factors Fellowships are funded for Senior Training Anaesthesiologists.
For more information, send us an email.
Fellows can develop skills in clinical governance, systems thinking and patient safety through a supervised project that applies Human Factor theory and methods to real-world healthcare challenges.
The role helps to integrate Human Factors into organisational processes.
Quarantined nonclinical time is provided to work with the Centre team to help EMHS achieve its vision of becoming Australia’s safest healthcare group.
Your work is supported by local experts from the University of Western Australia, other academics in Human Factors and experts from safety-critical industries.
We're committed to strengthening knowledge about Human Factors.
Join us to attend evidence-informed training that supports safer performance in complex clinical environments.
We've looked at other industries which rely heavily on safety training and adapted their learnings for the healthcare environment.
Since 2017, we have offered the Nexus Foundational Human Factors training course to more than 4,500 clinicians, nurses, allied health professionals, corporate staff and patient-support personnel.
We have shared knowledge and skills to understand how people, systems and environments interact in everyday practice.
Accreditation
Nexus Foundational Human Factors Training has been developed as the Centre’s foundational HF education program and is supported by recognised professional education and healthcare safety networks.
The course is accredited for continuing professional development (CPD) points through the College of Intensive Care Medicine of Australia and New Zealand (CICM), the Australian College of Nursing (ACN) and the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM). Nexus is also supported by the RPBMLG Executive Team and the Department of Health (DOH) WA through its recognition of Human Factors as an important component of patient safety (Patient safety – Human factors).
New courses
Once you have completed the Nexus Foundational Human Factors course as a prerequisite, ask us about these Nexus courses:
- Critical Care for staff working in critical care environments with critically ill patients
- Train the Trainer to become a skilled facilitator and deliver the Nexus program
- Assertive Statement Framework, adapted from the aviation industry with practical tools to articulate clinical concerns while maintaining professional relationships
- Stepping-Up sessions to help staff prepare for taking on more senior clinical and non-clinical roles
- Simulation for specific clinical areas such as Theatre
- SEIPS (Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety) to learn about evidence-based models for systems analysis of clinical incidents.
Our 2027 training dates are coming soon…
Let's improve our safety knowledge.
Our focus is to develop and strengthen Human Factors competencies through practical and simulation-based learning.
We use behavioural markers to build and assess skills such as communication, teamwork, decision-making and situational awareness.
Our approach supports capability development through targeted workshops, simulation exercises and formative assessment.
How is this different to the Nexus training courses?
The key difference is that Safety Skills involves real-life simulation and assessment.
Nexus programs do not include assessment and the exercises involved are only done to demonstrate the content in a practical way.
More information will be provided in 2027.
We want your help to identify and address the factors that influence patient safety, clinical performance and the delivery of reliable, resilient care.
Using Human Factors and systems-based approaches, we examine how we all work in clinical environments, recognising the complex interactions between people, processes, technology, tasks and the broader work system.
Let's discuss proactive clinical error management, Safety-II and high-reliability approaches, incident and thematic reviews, cluster analysis and systems-based methodologies such as SEIPS (Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety) and FRAM (Functional Resonance Analysis Method).
Importantly, we seek to move beyond identifying what went wrong to understanding why work succeeds or fails under varying conditions, and to translate these insights into meaningful, design-driven improvements.
This includes strengthening clinical practices, redesigning systems and workplace tools, applying the hierarchy of controls, and evaluating whether improvements implemented after investigations are effective and sustainable.
Through this approach, we aim to shift healthcare away from a predominantly reactive response to harm towards proactive risk management, continuous learning and system resilience, while supporting the translation and scaling of evidence-based practices across clinical services.
