Manufacturer Training Impact in Heuristic Analysis: Usability Evaluation Applied on Health Devices

The adoption of new technologies into hospitals has been improved diagnosis and patient care, and it has been also increased the effectiveness of the services concerned. Despite all the benefits of using medical devices, however, this new reality has brought a new kind of problem: errors caused by misuse. Errors which may result in adverse events and usually are credited to health professionals’ mistakes, often solved through actions like training and institute protocols that sometimes are inefficient. The study of interaction between man and machine may help to understand this new misuse issue and the causes that may lead to use errors. Aiming to improve equipment usability, the use of tools from Human Factors Engineering like Heuristic Analysis can contribute to usability problems identification. The objective of this paper is to verify the influence of equipment training on its usability problems by means of comparing the results from applying Heuristic Analysis technique on a traditional infusion pump before and after manufacturer training.