I’m getting really excited for my upcoming trip to Chicago to speak at the 84th Annual Aerospace Medical Association (ASMA) Meeting. What is Aerospace Medicine and what am I doing there?
Aerospace Medicine is a field dedicated to enhancing health, promoting safety, and improving performance of individuals who work or travel in unusual environments. The environments of space and aviation provide significant challenges, such as microgravity, radiation exposure, G-forces, emergency ejection injuries, and hypoxic conditions. This covers a wide spectrum of environments, from space and atmospheric flight to undersea deep diving activities. Really cool stuff! The ASMA is very diverse, comprised of specialist physicians as well as physiologists, bioenvironmental engineers, human factors specialists, psychologists, and many more.
I’ve been invited to speak on a panel sponsored by the ASMA Associate Fellows Group entitled Clinical Human Factors: Bringing HFACS and ADM to the Bedside. HFACS stands for Human Factors Analysis and Classification System and ADM stands for Aeronautical Decision Making. In plain language, this means we are going to speak about human nature traits and hardwired thinking processes that impact decision making. This is a huge honor for me, both for the invitation, and for the diverse audience I will meet. Added bonus – springtime in Chicago is beautiful!