Grad Seminar: Exploring Cognitive Work Analysis models and visualizations on bedside physiologic monitor in neurocritical care

Abstract

Moderate to severe traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of injury-induced death and disability. For patients with traumatic brain injuries (TBI), in the first 48 hours, 48% of patients show a clinically relevant neurological worsening and therefore, it is critical that clinicians can identify neurological worsening quickly and act on treatment accordingly.

This session will include two parts of our research project. First, we will show the neurocritical care environment and model our findings with the Cognitive Work Analysis framework. This does not only capture the constraints and challenges posed by the neurocritical care setting but also the specific decisions taken by novice and expert clinicians working in the unit. We will further dive into strategies they take for making critical decisions for the patients.

The second part of the session will show how we have investigated the challenges clinicians face daily, especially when they use the bedside physiologic monitors that display the most important information on the patients’ states. For this, we have examined how the trainee physicians could be supported by certain visualizations that can be integrated on such monitors in the future. The iterated interface (the so-called ecological interface) captures key neurophysiologic concepts and addresses the challenges we initially investigated.