Design implications for digital role-based support in intensive care nursing

Abstract

Medical staff should not only possess excellent clinical skills, but also be proficient in non-clinical, or non-technical, skills. These skills play an important role in, for example, teamwork, task management and coping. Our research investigates how product design can help support medical staff in their day-to-day non-clinical tasks. In the study presented here we focus on the work of intensive care nurses (ICU nurses). Workload and burn out rates are relatively high among this group. We investigated the functions future digital systems might offer to support them in their roles as practitioner, scholar and human. An interactive prototype was used to collect insights from ICU nurses. The results are design implications for digital role-based support for non-clinical tasks of ICU nurses.