Publication date: Sep 08, 2025
To share key learnings from the assessment of a COVID-19 vaccination system in Scotland using a Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) approach. Project data were collected in February 2021 in NHS Ayrshire and Arran (NHSAA) – the regional health authority – using document analysis (Service Delivery Manual, 2020), observations (2 site visits), and workshops (n = 8, with 26 participants). The Systematic Human Error Reduction and Prediction Approach (SHERPA) is a framework for human reliability analysis that can be used as part of a safety assessment or safety case to determine whether the system is ‘safe enough’ and provide recommendations to improve safety by mitigating error potential. In this paper it was used to assess the service delivery system and make recommendations. Many recovery mechanisms and risk control measures had already been implemented by NHSAA. Eighteen issues required additional risk control, grouped into three themes. The findings were used to improve the current service delivery and provide guidance for the safe design and delivery of future rollouts of time-critical public health vaccination programmes.
| Concepts | Keywords |
|---|---|
| Covid | COVID-19 |
| February | Healthcare |
| Learnings | Human factors |
| Scotland | Human reliability analysis |
| Vaccination | Service delivery |
| Vaccination |
Semantics
| Type | Source | Name |
|---|---|---|
| disease | MESH | COVID-19 |
| disease | IDO | site |