Achieving IT-supported standardized nursing documentation through participatory design.

In the Capital Region of Denmark a full-scale pilot project on IT-supported nursing documentation is - after running for two months at one full university hospital - showing promising results. In this paper we discuss participatory design as a method to design clinical documentation templates that support guideline-based highly structured standard documentation in a large organization with many stakeholders. Applying a participatory design (PD) approach at many organizational levels has involved the stakeholders actively in the design process. Developing a set of design principles has concurrently made it possible to frame the discussions among the different stakeholders. Both PD and design principles have been instrumental in designing and implementing a set of standard templates that support the daily work and coordination between the nurses.