The Usability and Safety Aspects of the Defibrillator Essay

The Usability and Safety Aspects of the Defibrillator - Essay Example The essay "The Usability and Safety Aspects of the Defibrillator" talks about the structure of an automated external defibrillator and the aspects of its usage. The evolution of the world has been accompanied by new, varied concepts. Needless to say, such variations have been felt in the way sets of equipment are designed. The manufacturing of sets of equipment has been persistently evolving. What appeared to matter so much, as far as the manufacturing of instruments was concerned, pertained to beauty and the size of the working of the instrument to enable it to serve the intended purposes. The transformations in the current, evolving world have changed the whole scenario. It is clearly depicted by concepts such as ergonomics, inclusivity, and work safety. As if not enough, desirable workplace environments has shaped the manufacturing process in certain ways, including the necessitation of incorporation of aspects pertaining to efficiency, as well as a reduction of stress at the workplace. Indeed, in the current world, ergonomic concepts and quality and safety of the equipment are arguably inseparable. Ergonomics concepts are inclined on coming up with designs of equipment and devices that are suitable for human operations. The objective of ergonomic concepts is to foster productivity while fulfilling the health requirements. The relevance of ergonomic concepts is most appreciable when designing products and equipment, as well as machines that contain interfaces that are not only reliable but easy to use., but easy for use (Beauchamin & Hays, 1996). Generally, there are several techniques and tools that are often used as approaches of human factors in addressing safety issues. These include usability testing, forcing functions, and sta ndardization and resiliency efforts. Human factors engineers often test new equipment and systems under the real world conditions in ensuring that unintended consequences of the new technologies are identified (Burns & Vincente, 1994). In most cases, usability testing can help in identifying workarounds. This paper seeks to discuss the safety measures in the design of each component in the automated external defibrillator (AED) with a focus on the reliability of the device in terms of bio-compatibility, mechanical failures, and electrical failures. Usability and Safety Aspect of the AED The automated external defibrillator is one of the portable electronic devices within the medical field that is used to automatically diagnose the potentially life threatening ventricular tachycardia and cardiac arrhythmias of the ventricular fibrillation in patients (Gliner et al. 1998). This device can treat these diseases through defibrillation, which is an application of the electrical therapy th at helps in stopping the arrhythmia, hence allowing the heart to be able to reestablish effective rhythm (Walsh & Krongrad, 1993). The automated external defibrillator (AEDs) has simple visual and audio commands that make them simple so that they can be used for layman. It is worth noting that in order to rate AEDs as being reliable in the diagnosis of heart related diseases, there was need for manufactures to take into consideration safety measures while designing each of the AED components in making sure the reliability of this device in terms of mechanical failures, bio-compatibility and electrical failures is guaranteed (Walsh & Krongrad, 1993). As a safety measure, the AED is designed in such a way that it can be used effectively and safely without any previous training. This implies that the use of the device is not restricted to the trained rescuers though training is often encouraged for purposes of helping improve on the time to correct pad placement and shock delivery. As often the case, the AEDs can analyze the ECG rhythm of a victim and be able to determine if a shock is needed. The semi-automatic AED often indicate the need for shock, which more often than not, gets delivered by an