INFORMATION-TRANSFER IN HIGH DEPENDENCY ENVIRONMENTS - AN ERGONOMIC ANALYSIS

We have studied the information flow in HDE (with special focus on the information transfer process) using data provided by a group of exper ienced health care professionals. A model of the information flow in H DE was built up. It postulates the existence of quanta of information (due to the artificial fragmentation of the information flow produced by the clinical working processes: organization in shifts, demand of s imultaneous activities from different staff members, etc.). This fragm entation is described by using the so-called Clinical Information Proc ess Units (CIPUs), which correspond to patient care activities going o n in parallely and serially linked blocks, performed by the staff in t he specific environments. Due to a transfer in responsibility over the patient the CIPUs are linked by information transfer events which are described using transfer modules (TraMs). We exemplified 32 CIPUs rel ated to the clinical environments (PreOp, Surgery, Recovery Intensive Care, Ward, Diagnostics, Outpatient) and the health care professional groups (Anesthesiologist/Intensivist, Surgeon, Nurse, Physician, Diagn ostic Physician, Physical Therapist). A matrix was established providi ng the transfer situations among the CIPUs enabling a systematic class ification of the TraMs. The contents of the TraMs are built up of info rmation link elements, which are assembled according to the specific s ettings of the transfer situation given by the emitter, receiver and p urpose. In summary we modelled the process of information transfer in HDE through CIPUs, TraMs and information links in a way, which may be useful to design information technology applications or to reorganize the information management in HDE.