Cognitive systems engineering in health care provides an overview of cognitive systems engineering principles in the context of health care it contains state of the art examples of cognitive systems applications that can be adapted by health care practitioners interested in systematic engineering approaches to systems improvement. Cognitive systems engineering has been widely and successfully applied in the design of safety critical systems such as nuclear power aviation and military command and control more recently these methods are being applied to the design of health and medical systems in order to improve health care quality reduce errors and adverse events . Cognitive systems engineering has been widely and successfully applied in the design of safety critical systems such as nuclear power aviation and military command and control. Cognitive systems engineering cse systems engineering and additional human factors methodologies for the design and improvement of health care systems are paramount to safe effec tive and efficient health care given the complex nature of sociotechnical health care systems requiring significant cogni tive work the use of cse approaches is