Interruptions, work coordination, and resilience. Evidence is emerging of an association between the number of workplace interruptions that hospital clinicians experience and outcomes such as clinical errors that could cause patient harm. However there is still no direct evidence that interruptions cause clinical errors. This project seeks such evidence, but also views interruptions as an integral part of normal work coordination. This project investigates the origin and need for interruptions, ....Interruptions, work coordination, and resilience. Evidence is emerging of an association between the number of workplace interruptions that hospital clinicians experience and outcomes such as clinical errors that could cause patient harm. However there is still no direct evidence that interruptions cause clinical errors. This project seeks such evidence, but also views interruptions as an integral part of normal work coordination. This project investigates the origin and need for interruptions, tests causal connections between interruptions and errors, and explores workplace improvements as a means to handle concerns about interruptions. This research will provide a solid basis from which clinical leaders can formulate policy about distractions and interruptions in the healthcare workplace. Read moreRead less
Sonification and Multiple-Patient Monitoring. Auditory alarms on medical equipment are meant to save lives. If there are too many nuisance alarms, though, staff become unresponsive to all alarms: this is "alarm fatigue". Alarm fatigue can lead to patient harm or even death, particularly if staff must divide their attention across multiple patients. This project conjectures that a form of auditory display called sonification might be extended to multiple-patient monitoring. In a series of three s ....Sonification and Multiple-Patient Monitoring. Auditory alarms on medical equipment are meant to save lives. If there are too many nuisance alarms, though, staff become unresponsive to all alarms: this is "alarm fatigue". Alarm fatigue can lead to patient harm or even death, particularly if staff must divide their attention across multiple patients. This project conjectures that a form of auditory display called sonification might be extended to multiple-patient monitoring. In a series of three studies this project will develop and test novel sonifications for remote monitoring of multiple patients. It also tests whether a head-worn display unit can help staff orient auditory attention effectively across multiple patients without distracting from current tasks. Outcomes will offer solutions to alarm fatigue.Read moreRead less
Coordination and communication in critical care: Assessing potential technology support. This project will examine temporal coordination demands of busy critical care environments, with the goal of developing better models and tools for evaluating the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) innovation. Millions of dollars can be wasted on healthcare ICT updates when the nature of critical care work, the means of communication, and temporal coordination demands are not fully unde ....Coordination and communication in critical care: Assessing potential technology support. This project will examine temporal coordination demands of busy critical care environments, with the goal of developing better models and tools for evaluating the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) innovation. Millions of dollars can be wasted on healthcare ICT updates when the nature of critical care work, the means of communication, and temporal coordination demands are not fully understood. The outcome of this project will be better conceptual and computational tools for assessing the impact of ICT innovation on safety-critical systems such as healthcare, so providing more cost-effective ICT solutions where there is rapidly-evolving ICT innovation.Read moreRead less