Minimizing foreign Retentions in surgeries
Human Factors Consultant with lens of cognitive psychology and behavioural science
With a team of Industry IT professionals, Human Factors Consultants, Engineers
Client emphasizes that hospital would like to reduce costly medical errors in surgical rooms. They noticed a hesitancy in nurses reporting incidents.
How can the surgical room be improved to avoid costly errors?
How can the hospital reduce foreign body retention, loss of pathological tissues, and surgical site errors?
What are some design recommendations?
Review of hospital documentations to understand patient and medical professional journey in surgical rooms which includes:
Videos
Clinical Documentations including standard operating procedure (SOP)
Case Studies
https://lighthouse.mq.edu.au/article/april-2020/What-happens-when-surgical-tools-are-left-inside-a-patient
Qualitative Methods in Operation Rooms to observe work-flow processes such as surgical sponge procedures.
Ethnography Observation
Shadowing
Group Interview with 30 medical personnel including hospital directors of different departments to understand user frustrations and failure points.
Photo by Jozemara Friorili Lemes from Pexels
Quantitative Methods: Video-Coding and Analysis of Physical Behaviour
I designed and conducted behavioural coding of videos of physicians and nurses in the surgical room. One of interesting finding is the behaviour of kicking and sharing a garbage can during pre-op procedures.
My goal was to illustrate the how video analysis can facilitate analysis of group behaviour on a macro-level.
Design recommendations to Key Decision Makers
Design and human factors recommendations were presented to physicians, nurses, and hospital key stakeholders including directors and departmental managers. Environment, equipment, movement, system, and cognitive behavioural recommendations were provided by the team.
My presentation was focused on a cognitive-behavioural analysis of human and tools interaction on a macro system level.
After review of recommendations, hospital followed-up with which changes they were interested in implementing and the team continuously work closely with the hospital.