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Characterizing the Nature of Work and Forces for Decision Making in Emergency Care

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Cognitive Informatics in Health and Biomedicine

Part of the book series: Health Informatics ((HI))

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Abstract

Healthcare as a complex system [1] is exemplified in emergency medicine [2, 3]. Emergency Departments (EDs) are dynamic, adaptive, and self-organizing. Additionally, ED providers are faced with inherent unpredictability regarding the number and severity of patients, concurrent management of multiple individuals requiring timely responses, and a need to cope with limited resources all within a life-critical, interruption-laden environment [4]. The layered complexity of such units includes the functions of the work, the implementation of technology, the people, the activities and workflows jointly performed by the people and the technology, as well as the social, physical, cultural, and organizational environment in which the ED is embedded. Managing the cognitive, physical, spatial, and temporal resources in such systems is crucial for patient safety and quality of care. Understanding the interaction of the complexity of this work and the environment, particularly as it relates to decision-making, is a first step in engineering solutions to support physician efforts.

Section 3 is adapted from Franklin et al’s (2011) paper Opportunistic decision making and complexity in emergency care, Journal of Biomedical Informatics. 44, 469–476.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biomedical Informatics, University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, TX, 77030, USA

    Amy Franklin PhD & Jiajie Zhang PhD, MS, FACMI

  2. National Center for Cognitive Informatics and Decision Making in Healthcare (NCCD), Houston, TX, 77030, USA

    Amy Franklin PhD & Jiajie Zhang PhD, MS, FACMI

  3. Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Texas Medical Center, Houston, TX, 77030, USA

    David J. Robinson MD, MS, FACEP

Authors
  1. Amy Franklin PhD
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  2. David J. Robinson MD, MS, FACEP
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  3. Jiajie Zhang PhD, MS, FACMI
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Amy Franklin PhD .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. New York Academy of Medicine, New York, New York, USA

    Vimla L. Patel

  2. Arizona State University, Scottsdale, Arizona, USA

    David R. Kaufman

  3. University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, Texas, USA

    Trevor Cohen

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© 2014 Springer-Verlag London

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Franklin, A., Robinson, D.J., Zhang, J. (2014). Characterizing the Nature of Work and Forces for Decision Making in Emergency Care. In: Patel, V., Kaufman, D., Cohen, T. (eds) Cognitive Informatics in Health and Biomedicine. Health Informatics. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5490-7_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5490-7_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-5489-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-5490-7

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