Dr Melinda Lyons is the Human Factors Lead at the National Patient Safety Agency. 
She specialises mainly is in the area of human reliability assessment (analysis and 
prediction of human error) in the context of safety and risk assessment. Prior to working 
in patient safety, Melinda worked in emergency management in offshore oil and gas and 
human factors in air traffic management. Following this, she carried out research and 
practical application of human factors methodologies in several areas in patient safety – 
including task analysis of the triage process in an emergency department, measuring of 
teamwork in surgery, quality improvement of handover in intensive care and systems 
analysis of errors in medication safety.  She has degrees in Psychology, Work Design 
and Ergonomics, a PhD in Emergency Management and MBA in Technology Management.