S. Ganapathy1, K. A. Berberich1, A. N. Kreiner2, M. McCarthy1 1Wright State University,Department Of Industrial And Human Factors Engineering; Department Of Trauma Care And Surgery,Dayton, OH, USA 2Air Force Research Lab,Human Performance Wing,DAyton, OH, USA
Introduction:
Transfer of care continuum is highly dynamic in nature and there are multiple complexities associated with man-man interaction and man-machine interaction. During transfer of patient care, adequate information related to the patient must be communicated very quickly and precisely. Providing the receiving emergency department with patient vitals and pre-hospital procedures that occurred during the EMT ride could allow for enhanced preparation and improved communication during the transfer process thereby being beneficial to the patient’s health. This paper focuses on designing and evaluating the usability of information presentation for a tablet device and the use of such device to improve efficiency during the transfer of care process. This could potentially help emergency department better prepare for the incoming patient.
Methods:
The experiment was conducted on a 7" Samsung tablet. The pool of participants was 16 nursing or medical students from WSU's nursing program and Boonshoft School of Medicine). A training period was provided to familiarize the participants with the display screens they would be seeing during the experimental scenarios. During the experimental phase, participants were asked to navigate through four different simulated transfer of care scenarios using a 7-inch tablet and create an action plan for when the patient would arrive.
Results:
Results indicated that basic information displays on the use of mobile devices for transfer of care could provide faster preparation response times in one and three patient-simulated scenarios. Results indicate that there were significant differences for simple and complex scenarios (p<0.0001) and for basic and advanced information displays (p=0.0474). An analysis of variance indicated there was a significant difference in the response time by situation (p<0.0001). Investigating the response times to create an action plan and SUS scores for display type, scenario, and type of medical personnel helped to identity the best information display design for patient vitals in a transfer of care.
Conclusion:
The fast paced, highly unpredictable environment of transfer of cares results in critical information being condensed down to be verbally conveyed as quickly as possible. Reducing patient information can result in errors, and even negative outcomes for the patient. Investigating the best information display resulted in the simpler displays having a faster response times compared to the advanced. Results also showed that the higher the usability score the quicker the response time suggesting future studies focus on high usability. This study can also help in training novice users the methods to prepare for complex scenarios during transfer of care.
