Distraction during safety critical tasks can reduce human performance and results in quality and / or safety impacts to the work.  Vulnerability to distractions is especially critical for routine tasks and an individual will be likely utilising ‘fast thinking’ (intuition) decision making, which effectively reduces the cognitive load by chunking steps and relying on heuristics yet introduces a lack of flexibility in decision making and perception of conditions which do not align with expectations. Distractions during this decision making approach can be especially impactful with the individual finding it more difficult to return to the correct step. Attempting to prevent individuals from using this approach is challenging as it is critical part of cognitive function and where competence is adequate ‘fast thinking’ will be inherently utilised in favour of ‘slow thinking’ (reasoning).

In the context of this analysis there are groups of steps where teams, individuals and the processes are more vulnerable to distraction. These are typically simple, routine steps which have a safety implication should they not be conducted correctly or in the correct order. To support teams and individuals, who will default to ‘fast thinking’ when capable, the focus should be on preventing the opportunity for the distraction and having system redundancy to catch errors and mitigate the consequences.

There is also benefit in conducting forced ‘slow thinking’ for these steps during training (this is often used in advanced driver training). This requires the participant to actively talk through the routine steps in detail to the trainer. For example: what they are looking to test, how they will test (e.g. place left red probe on etc) and what they expect as the result. During this they are more likely to make errors (hence doing this in a training environment or simulator), however it does promote the ability to more actively rehearse the steps, recover from errors in field and promotes an understanding of errors traps themselves.