Supporting crisis response with dynamic procedure aids

Abstract

Checklist usage can increase performance in complex, highrisk domains. While paper checklists are valuable, they are static, slow to access, and show both too much and too little information. We introduce Dynamic Procedure Aids to address four key problems in checklist usage: ready access to aids, rapid assimilation of content, professional acceptance, and limited attention. To understand their efficacy for crisis response, we created the dpAid software system. Its design arose through a multi-year participation in medical crisis response training featuring realistic team simulations. A study comparing Dynamic Procedure Aids, paper, and no aid, found that participants with Dynamic Procedure Aids performed significantly better than with paper or no aid. This study introduces the narrative simulation paradigm for comparatively assessing expert procedural performance through a score-and-correct approach.

Designing Collaborative Healthcare Technology for the Acute Care Workflow

“…The fields of human factors and human-computer interaction have employed various means to augment clinical settings for teams [11], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27]. France et al [28] found electronic whiteboard use reduces physician workload in an ED, resulting in fewer workflow interruptions.…”

“…In healthcare, shared displays enable clinicians to manage patient information, better attend to ongoing tasks, and view critical information. They have been applied as cognitive aids to support SA in a variety of ways [11], [23], [24], [27].…”

“…The spatial dimensions of the room will also affect the interaction modality and display type. For example, previous work employed shared displays as a way for clinicians to keep tabs of a situation [11]. In this work, a large monitor was attached to a code cart with the idea that team members could view information, while a clinician used a tablet to control the system.…”

“…There are clear safety advantages to introducing welldesigned checklists into the clinical workspace [10], [11]. Haynes et.…”

“…Poorly designed checklists may also create problems with information retrieval, causing clinicians to scan through dense text, tables, or across multiple pages [4]. Their overuse can also be dangerous, encouraging dependency and hampering the development of medical intuition from experience [11]. Furthermore, research exploring the efficacy of checklists in healthcare settings suggests some benefits may be dependent on the context, workflow, and practices of the institution [15].…”