[Human factors in medicine]

The concept of human factors is commonly used in the context of patient safety and medical errors, all too often ambiguously. In actual fact, the term comprises a wide range of meanings from human-machine interfaces through human performance and limitations up to the point of working process design; however, human factors prevail as a substantial cause of error in complex systems. This article presents the full range of the term human factors from the (emergency) medical perspective. Based on the so-called Swiss cheese model by Reason, we explain the different types of error, what promotes their emergence and on which level of the model error prevention can be initiated.