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Patient responsibility reallocation: a user-centered approach to support nurses’ handling of nurse calls

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Abstract

A central part of nurses’ work at a hospital department is to respond to nurse calls issued by patients in need of assistance. In the highly dynamic work environment, where nurses need to continuously shift focus and handle interruptions, managing nurse calls presents a challenge. Previous studies of nurses’ use of a wireless nurse call system deployed at a major Norwegian university hospital, point to how nurses apply various strategies to handle nurse calls efficiently. These strategies involve a high degree of collaboration and coordination among nurses. By means of a user-centered approach, a system prototype has been designed. This system aims to support nurses in their continuous reallocation of patient responsibilities, through the utilization of ubiquitous computing principles. We present results from the evaluation of the system prototype, for which a qualitative methodology was adopted. More concretely, we combined interviews and role-playing workshops with nurses and student nurses in order to (1) evaluate usability- and acceptability-related aspects and (2) evaluate the feasibility of the system to be used in real practice. The results indicate that the prototype design would further reinforce an already existing practice, allowing nurses to reallocate the patient responsibility more easily. Further, the system could support and improve the communication among nurses and reduce the number of unwanted interruptions. The paper concludes by describing how applying a user-centered approach in designing pervasive computing system is vital in order to make the technology seamlessly blend in with its context of use.

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Notes

  1. Department of breast and endocrine surgery, stroke department, department of neurology, department of kidney disease and endocrinology, department of otolaryngology, thorax department, and department of urologic surgery.

  2. Department of neurology, department of cardiovascular medicine, department of hematology, cancer department, thorax department, department of respiratory medicine, and orthopedic department.

  3. A medical procedure to restore an abnormal heartbeat using electricity.

  4. Electrocardiography.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the nurses who participated in the study as well as Terje Røsand who helped us to set up the laboratory. We would also like to thank Qi Wei for building an early version of the handover prototype. Further, we are grateful to Pieter Toussaint for his helpful comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Telematics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, O.S. Bragstads Plass 2a, 7491, Trondheim, Norway

    Joakim Klemets & Katrien De Moor

  2. Medical Technology Research Centre, Norwegian Research Centre for Electronic Patient Records, 7491, Trondheim, Norway

    Joakim Klemets

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  1. Joakim Klemets
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Correspondence to Joakim Klemets.

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Klemets, J., De Moor, K. Patient responsibility reallocation: a user-centered approach to support nurses’ handling of nurse calls. Pers Ubiquit Comput 19, 601–621 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-015-0854-z

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