Gemma Read from the Centre for Human Factors and Sociotechnical Systems (UniSC) chats to Samantha Jackson about Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) safety.

Samantha Jackson is a registered psychologist, human factors professional, and PhD candidate. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Psychology), a Bachelor of Social Science (Psychology)(Honours), and a Postgraduate Certificate in Safety and Accident Investigation.

She served in the Australian Army for 24 years, holding both generalist and specialist officer roles across full-time and part-time service. Her career spanned multiple domains, including communications and information systems, aviation, health, and policy. In her final role, she served within Army Aviation’s Psychology and Human Factors team, where she provided specialist advice on system safety, human performance, role suitability, occupational selection, task and systems analysis, incident investigation, and fatigue risk management.

She is currently pursuing a PhD at the Centre for Human Factors and Sociotechnical Systems at the University of the Sunshine Coast. Her research aims to enhance the safety performance of Australia’s Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) by applying systems thinking through a many-models approach. Specifically, she aims to identify key leverage points within the sociotechnical safety management system to optimise its overall effectiveness.

Associate Professor Gemma Read and Professor Paul Salmon are supervising Samantha’s research. Gemma and Samantha discuss her recent study which analysed 14 RPAS incident investigation reports. The article is available open access here:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003687025000043

This educational podcast is brought to you by the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society of Australia. If you like this podcast please make us your favourite on your podcast app.

If you want to find out more about Human Factors and Ergonomics or if you have a question about this podcast please go to the HFESA website ergonomics.org.au and make your request via our contact page. We will be back with more episodes soon!

Mary Patterson MD, MEd is a pediatric emergency medicine physician and the Associate Dean of Experiential Learning and the Lou Oberndorf Professor of Healthcare Technology at the University of Florida where she has directed the Center for Experiential Learning and Simulation since 2018. She is past- president of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare and has served on the BOD for the Society of Simulation in Healthcare and the International Pediatric Simulation Society. In addition, she is the Chair of the Executive Committee of the Resilient Healthcare Society.

She was the founding medical director of the Cincinnati Children’s Center for Simulation, Education and Research. In addition, she was the Associate Vice Chair Medical Education and Executive Director of Simulation at Children’s National Medical Center.

Mary has served as the Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Florida since 2021.

Mary has been a federally funded investigator in simulation, team performance and patient safety and publishes in the areas of patient safety, team performance, human factors and Resilience Engineering. She is a past chair of the Healthcare Safety and Quality Improvement Research Study Section of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She was inducted as a Fellow of the Academy of the Society of Simulation in Healthcare in 2018

This educational podcast is brought to you by the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society of Australia. If you like this podcast please make us your favourite on your podcast app.

If you want to find out more about Human Factors and Ergonomics or if you have a question about this podcast please go to the HFESA website ergonomics.org.au and make your request via our contact page. We will be back with more episodes soon!

Craig Fletcher and Sharon Todd explore the world of designing HFE into projects including some recent work on the use of VR to reduce suicide on the rail network.

Craig has 25 years experience in the area of ergonomics and human factors, both in Australia and the UK. He is experienced in conducting human factors assessments for a broad range of industry and application. Craig is focussed on delivering practical solutions to human factors problems and is experienced in managing a wide range of human factors projects.

This educational podcast is brought to you by the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society of Australia. If you like this podcast please make us your favourite on your podcast app.

If you want to find out more about Human Factors and Ergonomics or if you have a question about this podcast please go to the HFESA website ergonomics.org.au and make your request via our contact page. We will be back with more episodes soon!