Abstract
Large, easily viewed status boards are commonly used in some healthcare settings such as emergency departments, operating theaters, intensive care units, and inpatient wards. Because these artefacts were developed by front-line users, and have little to no supervisory or regulatory control, they offer valuable insights into the theories of work and hazard held by those users. Although the status boards case were locally developed over many years for within-group coordination, they have also become useful for between-group coordination across organizational boundaries. In this paper, we compare and contrast the use of such status boards in two disparate settings: a US emergency department, and a UK pediatric ward, and note striking similarities in their form and usage, despite the large differences in setting.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Behara R, Wears RL, et al (2005) Conceptual framework for the safety of handovers. In: Henriksen K (ed) Advances in patient safety, Vol 2. Agency for healthcare research and quality/department of defense, Rockville, MD, pp 309–321
Bisantz AM, Ockerman JJ (2002) Informing the evaluation and design of technology in intentional work environments through a focus on artefacts and implicit theories. Int J Hum Comput Stud 56(2):247–265
Bisantz AM, Ockerman JJ (2003) Lessons from a focus on artifacts and implicit theories: Case studies in analysis and design. In Hollnagel E (ed) Handbook of cognitive task design. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ
Carroll JM, Campbell RL (1989) Artifacts as psychological theories. Behav inf technol 8(4):247–256
Derlet R, Richards J, et al (2001) Frequent overcrowding in US emergency departments. Acad Emerg Med 8(2):151–155
Grusenmeyer C (1995) Shared functional representation in cooperative tasks: the example of shift changeover. Int J Hum Factor Man 5:163–176
Hollnagel E, Woods DD, et al (eds) (2006) Resilience engineering. Ashgate, Aldershot, UK
Hutchins E (1995) How a cockpit remembers its speeds. Cognitive Science 19(3):265–288
Kirlik A (1995) Requirements for psychological models to support design: toward an ecological task analysis. In: Flach J, Hancock P, Caird J, Vicente KJ (eds) Global perspectives on the ecology of human machine systems, Vol 1. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, pp 68–120
Larkin JH (1989) Display-based problem solving. In: Kotovsky K (ed) Complex information processing: the impact of Herbert A Simon. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsday, NJ, pp 319–341
Nemeth CP, Cook RI, et al (2004) Using cognitive artifacts to understand distributed cognition. IEEE Tran Syst Man Cyberne A 34(6):726–735
O’Hara K, Perry M, et al (eds) (2003) Public and situated displays: social and interactional aspects of shared display technologies. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, NL
Obradovich JH, Woods DD (1996) Users as designers: how people cope with poor HCI design in computer-based medical devices. Hum Factors 38(4):574–592
Richardson LD, Asplin BR, et al (2002) Emergency department crowding as a health policy issue: past development, future directions. Ann Emerg Med 40(4):388–393
Roth EM, Christian CK, et al (2004) Using field observations as a tool for discovery: analysing cognitive and collaborative demands in the operating room. Cogn Technol Work 6(3):148–157
Salluzo RF, Mayer TA, et al (1997) Emergency department management: principles and applications. Mosby, St Louis, MO
Strauss A, Corbin J (1998) Basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. 2nd edn. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA
Wears RL, Perry SJ, et al (2004) Conceptual framework for studying shift changes and other transitions in care. Proceedings of the human factors and ergonomics society 48th Annual Meeting. New Orleans, LA, pp 1615–1618
Wears RL, Perry SJ, et al (2003) Shift changes among emergency physicians: best of times, worst of times. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 47th Annual Meeting. Denver, CO, pp 1420–1423
Wilson S, Galliers J, et al (2005a) Cognitive artifacts in support of medical work: an in situ evaluation. Proceedings of the BHCIG Workshop, London, UK
Wilson S, Galliers J, et al (2005b) Medical handover: a study and implications for information technology. In: Tartaglia R, Bagnara S, Bellandi T, Albolino S (eds) Healthcare systems, ergonomics, and patient safety. Taylor & Francis, Leiden, pp 333–336
Woods DD (1998) Designs are hypotheses about how artifacts shape cognition and collaboration. Ergonomics 41(2):168–173
Xiao Y (2005) Artifacts and technical work in health care: methodological, theoretical, and technological implications of the tangible. J Biomed Inform 38(1):26–33
Xiao Y, Lasome C, et al (2001) Cognitive properties of a whiteboard: a case study in a trauma centre. Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Bonn, Germany
Acknowledgements
The UK portion of this work was conducted in collaboration with the Bromley Hospitals NHS Trust and was funded in part by the ESRC-DTI-EPSRC (PACCIT) LINKI Research Programme as the ACE (Information Appliances in Clinical Environments) project (ref: PACCIT RES-328-25-0002). The US portion of this work was funded in part by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ, project P20 HS11592), and by the National Patient Safety Foundation. Additional funding from the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (Scholarly Sabbatical Grant) supported the joint work.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wears, R.L., Perry, S.J., Wilson, S. et al. Emergency department status boards: user-evolved artefacts for inter- and intra-group coordination. Cogn Tech Work 9, 163–170 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-006-0055-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-006-0055-7