The Effect of Psychotropic Drugs as a Performance Influencing Factor on Human Reliability Assessment

The increasing use/abuse of psychotropic drugs is an alarming social phenomenon with repercusions in many areas, especially in reliability engineering. The aim of this paper is to present a method developed by a multidisciplinary team composed of ergonomists, psychiatrists, information technologists...

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Main Authors: Celso Luiz Santiago Figueiroa Filho, Diego Gervasio Frias Suarez, Edilson Machado De Assis, Gabriel Alves Da Costa Lima, Robson Da Silva Magalhaes
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2020-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9044207/
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author Celso Luiz Santiago Figueiroa Filho
Diego Gervasio Frias Suarez
Edilson Machado De Assis
Gabriel Alves Da Costa Lima
Robson Da Silva Magalhaes
author_facet Celso Luiz Santiago Figueiroa Filho
Diego Gervasio Frias Suarez
Edilson Machado De Assis
Gabriel Alves Da Costa Lima
Robson Da Silva Magalhaes
author_sort Celso Luiz Santiago Figueiroa Filho
collection DOAJ
description The increasing use/abuse of psychotropic drugs is an alarming social phenomenon with repercusions in many areas, especially in reliability engineering. The aim of this paper is to present a method developed by a multidisciplinary team composed of ergonomists, psychiatrists, information technologists, and reliability engineers to quantitatively consider the impact of psychotropic drugs on the assessment of human reliability of Operation and Maintenance (O&M) personnel of a hydroelectric plant. To achieve the proposed objective, the first step was the identification of drugs that affect the psychic-cognitive/sensory and motor functions as a side effect and the frequency (probability of occurrence) of the effect. This was done mining public and private drug databases. A qualitative (symbolic) scale later translated into numerical values was used to quantify the impact of each drug on the affected functions. At the same time, O&M tasks were broken down into observable activity sequences, recording the frequency of each activity on each task (Task Analysis). Then, the relationship between each activity and the sensory- cognitive-motor psychic functions was established, based on the knowledge and experience of the team involved. Again a qualitative (symbolic) scale was defined and later transformed into a numerical scale. As a result, the first version of a drug effect - task knowledge database (KDB) was built with the symbolic and numerical values assigned to all relationships between the different model elements. Although the KDB needs to be systematically reviewed and updated by a broader network of ergonomists and psychiatrists, it has served as proof of concept and a starting point for the development of a human risk management tool for hydroelectric power plants. The last step was to calculate a new Performance Shaping Factor (PSF) due to Psychotropic Drugs Use (PDU), for each drug in each of the O&M tasks. In a preliminary assessment of the inclusion of PDU-PSF with three common methods of Human Reliability Assessment (HRA), we found an increased risk of human failure ranging from approximately 15% to 35%, depending on the HRA method. The case study used to illustrate the method considered a routine operator inspection task using an antidepressant drug. The proposed method can be updated for new drugs and can be refined/customized for other high-risk human activities such as oil and gas and petrochemical industries, nuclear power plants, aviation, and surgery, among others.
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spelling doaj.art-175ae3b710ef4c50940ec32aeb9ed37d2022-12-21T20:30:36ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362020-01-018806548067210.1109/ACCESS.2020.29824049044207The Effect of Psychotropic Drugs as a Performance Influencing Factor on Human Reliability AssessmentCelso Luiz Santiago Figueiroa Filho0https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9487-0178Diego Gervasio Frias Suarez1Edilson Machado De Assis2Gabriel Alves Da Costa Lima3Robson Da Silva Magalhaes4Escola Politécnica, Programa de Engenharia Industrial (PEI), Universidade Federal da Bahia–UFBA, Salvador, BrazilDepartamento de Ciências Exatas e da Terra, Colegiado de Sistemas da Informação, UNEB–Universidade Estadual da Bahia, Salvador, BrazilFundação para o Desenvolvimento de Bauru, São Paulo, BrazilFundação para o Desenvolvimento de Bauru, São Paulo, BrazilDiretoria de Pesquisa, Criação e Inovação (DPCI), UFSB–Universidade Federal do Sul da Bahia, Itabuna, BrazilThe increasing use/abuse of psychotropic drugs is an alarming social phenomenon with repercusions in many areas, especially in reliability engineering. The aim of this paper is to present a method developed by a multidisciplinary team composed of ergonomists, psychiatrists, information technologists, and reliability engineers to quantitatively consider the impact of psychotropic drugs on the assessment of human reliability of Operation and Maintenance (O&M) personnel of a hydroelectric plant. To achieve the proposed objective, the first step was the identification of drugs that affect the psychic-cognitive/sensory and motor functions as a side effect and the frequency (probability of occurrence) of the effect. This was done mining public and private drug databases. A qualitative (symbolic) scale later translated into numerical values was used to quantify the impact of each drug on the affected functions. At the same time, O&M tasks were broken down into observable activity sequences, recording the frequency of each activity on each task (Task Analysis). Then, the relationship between each activity and the sensory- cognitive-motor psychic functions was established, based on the knowledge and experience of the team involved. Again a qualitative (symbolic) scale was defined and later transformed into a numerical scale. As a result, the first version of a drug effect - task knowledge database (KDB) was built with the symbolic and numerical values assigned to all relationships between the different model elements. Although the KDB needs to be systematically reviewed and updated by a broader network of ergonomists and psychiatrists, it has served as proof of concept and a starting point for the development of a human risk management tool for hydroelectric power plants. The last step was to calculate a new Performance Shaping Factor (PSF) due to Psychotropic Drugs Use (PDU), for each drug in each of the O&M tasks. In a preliminary assessment of the inclusion of PDU-PSF with three common methods of Human Reliability Assessment (HRA), we found an increased risk of human failure ranging from approximately 15% to 35%, depending on the HRA method. The case study used to illustrate the method considered a routine operator inspection task using an antidepressant drug. The proposed method can be updated for new drugs and can be refined/customized for other high-risk human activities such as oil and gas and petrochemical industries, nuclear power plants, aviation, and surgery, among others.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9044207/Human error analysisreliabilitytask analysispsychotropic drugshuman reliability
spellingShingle Celso Luiz Santiago Figueiroa Filho
Diego Gervasio Frias Suarez
Edilson Machado De Assis
Gabriel Alves Da Costa Lima
Robson Da Silva Magalhaes
The Effect of Psychotropic Drugs as a Performance Influencing Factor on Human Reliability Assessment
IEEE Access
Human error analysis
reliability
task analysis
psychotropic drugs
human reliability
title The Effect of Psychotropic Drugs as a Performance Influencing Factor on Human Reliability Assessment
title_full The Effect of Psychotropic Drugs as a Performance Influencing Factor on Human Reliability Assessment
title_fullStr The Effect of Psychotropic Drugs as a Performance Influencing Factor on Human Reliability Assessment
title_full_unstemmed The Effect of Psychotropic Drugs as a Performance Influencing Factor on Human Reliability Assessment
title_short The Effect of Psychotropic Drugs as a Performance Influencing Factor on Human Reliability Assessment
title_sort effect of psychotropic drugs as a performance influencing factor on human reliability assessment
topic Human error analysis
reliability
task analysis
psychotropic drugs
human reliability
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9044207/
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