The Cognitive Science Colloquium is a series hosted by the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Each semester, it sponsors several presentations, given by in-field professionals, regarding the topics of psychology, behavioral sciences and neuroscience.
This semester, Dr. Ken Catchpole, Smart State Endowed Chair in Clinical Practice and Human Factors at the Medical University of South Carolina in the Department of Anesthesiology, was the guest speaker.
On Friday, Dec. 6, Catchpole shared his research and experimentation in human factors in healthcare. The presentation, open to students, faculty, staff and the public, was in Tolentine Hall at 3:30 p.m. A reception with light refreshments followed.
“I love to talk about what I do,” Catchpole said. “I hope that it’s inspiring. I hope that it helps people [and] students have a different perception of the world. I hope it helps people who are interested in humans and human behavior and comprehension to understand how that can be used in the real world to understand and pick apart and produce better ways to deliver healthcare.”
Human factors focus on the relationship between people and systems, placing the human brain at the center of each system. In his research, Catchpole examines how humans operate differently depending upon their respective fields or circumstances.
He highlighted the high rate of human errors in an operating room. Catchpole urged that rather than blaming the clinician for a mistake, people should first ask whether the clinician was given all the appropriate tools for success. For example, was the equipment properly labeled? This shifts the blame from the clinician to an ineffective system.
“This is something I want to go into,” junior psychology major, Katherine Bresnahan, said. “After hearing about how many human errors, and how there’s a whole psychological piece to it, when I’m one day in the operating room, I want to be able to apply what I learned here at Villanova and make it a safer environment for patients and for the team.”
Catchpole shared some of his previous experimentation and findings. When he was in college, he conducted research regarding sound localization from the back of an ambulance. Catchpole had created two different types of sirens and studied how ambulance drivers respond to each.
He has also experimented with pilots and a motor racing team to discover ways in which their systems could be reorganized and restructured to create more effective teamwork.
His lecture and real-world examples resonated well with the various audience members.
“I have a lot of interest in improvement in my own practice and improvement in the care that my colleagues in my institution provide,” Dante Cerza, Physician at the Nemours Children’s Hospital in Wilmington Delaware and Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology at Jefferson University, said. “When you look at people in my field who are doing what they do, we’ve been taught to do what we do, there’s some tradition to being taught what we do. There’s a lot more information that we’ve gained on how we function, cognitively speaking. That really hasn’t always been a part of considering how to teach us what to do or even what we do. I think it’s a big opportunity for integration toward a lot of improvement.”
“What I found interesting as a professor of psychology is how much of what we teach our majors explain a lot of the things in these other fields,” Dr. Diego Fernandez-Duque, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, said. “They have the same tendencies to attribute people’s behavior to other factors as opposed to institutions.”
“It’s really important to understand how humans work in the context of their workplaces, and I am someone who’s very interested in organizational psychology so, how organizations work, how we can be more effective, how teams can be more effective,” first-year Master of Science in Psychology student, Madison Battinelli, said. “It’s less so from the cognitive perspective, and I think human factor psychologists should work with organizational psychologists to really create a robust and effective teamwork space that I don’t think either could do alone. It’s meaningful to me in that it’s a field I see myself collaborating with in the future.”
Toward the end of the lecture, Catchpole shared his feelings about the current narrative surrounding artificial intelligence.
“There are so many narratives around AI now,” Catchpole said. “The combination of AI and human beings is great but pretending that AI can do the things that humans can do is not the case now.”
To conclude, Catchpole reemphasized his message that the human brain must be centered among all systems.
“If we want to do amazing things, we’ve got to, instead of seeing people as the problem, we’ve got to think about why they think what they do and build the world around them,” Catchpole said.
