Biomedical subjects

Colin G Drury

Publications and source records attributed to Colin G Drury.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2007

Task demands and human capabilities in door use.

Doors are ubiquitous in the built environment, bur despite their frequent use by people and their involvement in over 300,000 injuries per year (USA), they are little studied from a human factors perspective. This paper provides a classification scheme for doors based on human/door interaction and a prototypical task analysis of door use. Two observational studies were performed on a particular type of door. The first observed 1600 human/door interactions and found that people's use of force-enhancing strategies increased for larger doors, particularly for people of smaller stature. The second observed 800 interactions with push doors and found that the pont where force is exerted is higher for taller individuals and closer to the center of the door than is typically assumed for placing handles. Th second study was partly corroborated by measuring the position of wear patterns on doors. As is expected in human factors, the was people used doors was a function of both task demands and human capabilities. These results suggests that those specifying doors for building s use a restoring torque below 30 Nm and site the handle or push plate 250-350 mm from the door edge and 1000-1500 mm above the floor.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed2006

Vicarious perception of postural discomfort and exertion.

Perceived exertion and discomfort have been used extensively in ergonomics practice. Job incumbents typically rate their exertion on scales such as Borg's rated perceived effort (RPE) and their discomfort on scales such as Corlett and Bishop's body part discomfort scales (BPD). This study asks whether exertion and discomfort can be perceived by an external observer, i.e. is vicarious perception possible? Four participants (targets) performed 20 postural holding tasks selected from Ovako Working Posture Analysing System postures and gave RPE and BPD scores for each posture. Video clips of each target in each posture were shown to four expert ergonomists and 23 novices, who also gave RPE and BPD scores. Correlations between targets and observers scores were high, with significance exceeding p = 0.01. Observers were generally conservative, rating easy postures too high and difficult postures too low. All observers rated female targets higher than male targets. Female observers rated all targets higher then male observers. Vicarious perception of discomfort and exertion was possible, but there was not a one-to-one correspondence to ratings given by those experiencing the posture.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Using simulated investigations for accident investigation studies.

Regardless of the actual causes of particular accidents, it is the causes identified by the analyst that determine what responses are made, and how safety is managed in industry. Past authors have suggested that investigation might be biased, but studies were limited by the lack of similarity to real-world investigation tasks in which investigators must decide what information to acquire as well as analyse and interpret it. A technique was developed to use simulated investigations rather than attribution judgements about causation. Three studies are described, using simulated investigation to compare elicited knowledge and hypotheses among safety specialists, to compare investigations using job aids with unaided investigations, and to teach students about investigation bias and comprehensiveness. The method was well accepted by participants and shows flexibility for a range of uses, although it may have limitations.

Accidents, Occupational↗

PubMed2002

The effects of probe length on Fitts' law.

Experiments were aimed at determining the effect of a human using an extended probe when making movements that required accuracy at the completion of the movement. Ten subjects performed 64 conditions of varying amplitude of movement, final accuracy and probe length. Movement time increased with probe lengths from 100 to 400mm for all conditions of amplitude and required accuracy. The effect of probe length was included in a mathematical description of the data through a multiplicative term on Fitts' index of difficulty (ID), possibly arising from tremor of the hand probe system in controlling approach to the target. Probe length had the greatest effect at high ID, where a probe of 400 mm length increased movement time by about 25% over that for a 100mm probe. The model developed has application for accurate movements with long tools such as screwdrivers or crowbars, head-mounted devices for the disabled, or other tasks where the work interface is at the end of an extended probe.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Medical error and human factors engineering: where are we now?

The goal of human factors engineering is to optimize the relationship between humans and systems by studying human behavior, abilities, and limitations and using this knowledge to design systems for safe and effective human use. With the assumption that the human component of any system will inevitably produce errors, human factors engineers design systems and human/machine interfaces that are robust enough to reduce error rates and the effect of the inevitable error within the system. In this article, we review the extent and nature of medical error and then discuss human factors engineering tools that have potential applicability. These tools include taxonomies of human and system error and error data collection and analysis methods. Finally, we describe studies that have examined medical error, and on the basis of these studies, present conclusions about how human factors engineering can significantly reduce medical errors and their effects.

Ergonomics↗