Designing Collaborative Healthcare Technology for the Acute Care Workflow

Preventable medical errors in hospitals are the third leading cause of death in the United States. Many of these are caused by poor situational awareness, especially in acute care resuscitation scenarios. While a number of checklists and technological interventions have been developed to reduce cognitive load and improve situational awareness, these tools often do not fit the clinical workflow. To better understand the challenges faced by clinicians in acute care codes, we conducted a qualitative study with interprofessional clinicians at three regional hospitals. Our key findings are: Current documentation processes are inadequate (with information recorded on paper towels); reference guides can serve as fixation points, reducing rather than enhancing situational awareness; the physical environment imposes significant constraints on workflow; homegrown solutions may be used often to solve unstandardized processes; simulation scenarios do not match real-world practice. We present a number of considerations for collaborative healthcare technology design and discuss the implications of our findings on current work for the development of more effective interventions for acute care resuscitation scenarios.