Information handoffs in critical care and their implications for information quality: A socio-technical network approach.

OBJECTIVE

The design of health ICTs, as well as human factors, have been shown to influence patient information quality. The aim of this study was to understand how patterns of interaction between these factors influence information quality aspects in a critical care environment.

METHOD

We conducted an ethnographic study of socio-technical information handoffs in a critical care unit. Data collection methods included non-participant observations and semi-structured interviews. Methodological principles from network analysis (SNA, VNA) were used to develop visual network diagrams, as well as to analyze the composition of the information network and its influence on patient information quality.

RESULTS

The network patterns that emerged uncover that human actors have many information processing and dissemination roles at the critical care unit. However, ICTs play key network roles, acting as information intermediaries and gatekeepers. We further identify three types of information handoffs in the critical care environment - human-human, human-ICT and ICT-human. On the one hand, we find that human-human and ICT-human handoffs influence contextual and intrinsic aspects of patient information, such as information completeness and accuracy. On the other hand, human-ICT handoffs influence information accessibility and representational quality, such as consistency and interpretability.

DISCUSSION

The results suggest that standardizing change of shift handoff communication may not be sufficient to prevent information decay in complex care trajectories. In particular, we argue that ensuring information consistency and interpretability across disciplines and professions is as important as ensuring information completeness and accuracy during change of shift handoffs. ICT and workflow design opportunities are discussed as means to address overlapping or conflicting information needs across disciplines and professions, increase information consistency, and reduce information redundancy across the network.