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The purpose of this research is to use ecological design theory to create novel clinical information displays that help clinicians integrate patient data from several sources and then evaluate the degree to which they improve clinicians’ recognition, diagnosis, and treatment of critical events. |
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As many as 98,000 Americans die in hospitals each year due to medical error. The cost of those errors is over $38 billion (Institute of Medicine, 2000). Despite the increased technology in healthcare, the patient safety problem has persisted. Contributing to the problem is the huge number of data elements clinicians must integrate and synthesize to evaluate a patient's status. Not only are many data elements needed, but also clinicians must obtain those data elements from many sources and many different proprietary systems. Current computer technology typically compiles data from several sources on one screen, but provides no synthesis. Experts have learned to identify specific patterns in the data, but novices treat each data point as equally important, which increases their cognitive workload and potential for errors.
The goal of our research is to use ecological design theory to create clinical information displays that help novices identify the patterns that experts use to recognize, diagnose and treat patient problems. We first identify the important data that experts use and then present that data and the relationships that experts have learned to recognize in a clinical display. We then test the utility of that display for novice and expert doctors and nurses. Our initial results suggest that our approach helps novice ICU nurses and physicians better understand clinical problems and the underlying physiological mechanisms that are responsible for those problems.
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