A human factors approach to quality improvement in oxygen prescribing

The safe hospital administration of oxygen has been shown to improve outcomes for specific patient groups, including those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Oxygen prescribing is therefore recognised as a quality standard within the COPD Clinical Audit of the National Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Programme. Oxygen prescription within our hospital electronic prescribing system showed poor compliance, despite previous quality improvement (QI) interventions. Using the functional resonance analysis method (FRAM), a human factors methodology, alongside existing QI approaches allowed capture of everyday work (‘work-as-done’) using qualitative data. This confirmed the complexity of the socio-technical healthcare system in which care is delivered and the variability of steps in the process, and provided new potential interventions to improve the safe administration of oxygen. The use of human factors tools within QI projects may help bridge normative models of work-as-prescribed and inductive models of work-as-done to support improvement and sustainability of care delivery interventions.