Inter-observer agreement and reliability assessment for observational studies of clinical work.

Inter-observer agreement (IOA) is a key aspect of data quality in time-and-motion studies of clinical work. To date, such studies have used simple and ad hoc approaches for IOA assessment, often with minimal reporting of methodological details. The main methodological issues are how to align time-stamped task intervals that rarely have agreeing start and end times, and how to assess IOA for multiple nominal variables. We present a combination of methods that simultaneously addresses both these issues and provides a more appropriate measure by which to assess IOA for time-and-motion studies. The issue of alignment is addressed by converting task-level data into small time windows then aligning data from different observers by time. A method applicable to multivariate nominal data, the iota score, is then applied to the time-aligned data. We illustrate our approach by comparing iota scores to the mean of univariate Cohen's kappa scores through application of these measures to existing data from an observational study of emergency department physicians. While the two scores generated very similar results under certain conditions, iota was more resilient to sparse data issues. Our results suggest that iota applied to time windows considerably improves on previous methods used for IOA assessment in time-and-motion studies, and that Cohen's kappa and other univariate measures should not be considered the gold standard. Rather, there is an urgent need for ongoing explicit discussion of methodological issues and solutions to improve the ways in which data quality is assessed in time-and-motion studies in order to ensure the conclusions drawn from such studies are robust.

Visualising clinical work in the emergency department: Understanding interleaved patient management.

We present a unique data visualisation approach, called workflow time charts, to illustrate the sequential and multi-dimensional nature of work in emergency departments. Using 40 h of data from direct observations of emergency physicians, we applied the charts to visualise patient-stratified physicians' work as a continuous temporal process, including distinguishing tasks of different types and representing external prompts (similar to interruptions) and multitasking performance. The charts showed frequent changes in the nature of observed activities, with interleaved multitasking a constant feature and external prompts often clustered in time. Evidence of seniority-related differences in work were apparent with consultants switching between more concurrent patients and receiving more frequent clinical prompts than junior physicians, illustrating their overseeing and advice-giving role. The ubiquity of interleaved multitasking suggests a need to focus on developing individual strategies to support frequent cognitive switching. Work that appears fragmented at physician level may form part of a flexible and robust system, rather than an error-prone set of isolated individual behaviours.

Medication Management in Municipality-Based Healthcare: A Time and Motion Study of Nurses.

The objective of this observational time and motion study was to increase our understanding of how nurses in home healthcare currently distribute their work time with a focus on the medication management process. The research was conducted in four municipalities in the southern part of Sweden. Participants were nurses working in home healthcare. The study measured proportion of time, comparison of proportions of time, proportion of time spent multitasking, and rate of interruptions per hour. Of total observed time, 20.4% was spent on medication management and of these tasks the highest proportion of time was spent on communications and dispensing medications. Nurses in nursing homes spent more time (23.0% vs. 17.4%, p = 0.001) on medication management than nurses in private homes. Nurses spent 47.9% of their time completing tasks with someone else, including patients, but had minimal interaction with prescribers. We observed a rate of 1.2 (95% CI 1.1-1.4) interruptions per hour on average and 30% of all interruptions occurred during medication management tasks. Nurses spent 3.7% of their time multitasking. Interruptions while performing medication-related tasks were common, as well as multitasking. Causes and consequences of the results need to be addressed in order to improve the safety of medication management for patients receiving municipality-based home care.

Do electronic discharge summaries contain more complete medication information? A retrospective analysis of paper versus electronic discharge summaries.

Complete, accurate and timely hospital discharge summaries are important for continuity of care. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an electronic discharge summary system in improving the medication information provided compared to the information in paper discharge summaries. We conducted a retrospective audit of 199 paper and 200 electronic discharge summaries from a 350-bed teaching hospital in Sydney, Australia. The completeness of medication information, and whether medication changes during the admission were explained, were assessed. Further, the likelihood of any incomplete information having an impact on continuity of care was assessed. There were 1352 and 1771 medication orders assessed in paper and electronic discharge summaries, respectively. Of these, 90.9% and 93.4% were complete in paper and electronic discharge summaries, respectively. The dose (OR 25.24, 95%CI: 3.41-186.9) and route (OR 8.65, 95%CI: 3.46-21.59) fields of medication orders, were more likely to be complete in electronic as compared with paper discharge summaries. There was no difference for drug frequency (OR 1.09, 95%CI: 0.77-1.55). There was no significant improvement in the proportion of incomplete medication orders rated as unclear and likely to impede continuity of care in paper compared with electronic discharge summaries (7.3% vs. 6.5%). Of changes to medication regimen, only medication additions were more likely to be explained in the electronic (n=253, 37.2%) compared to paper (n=104, 14.3%) discharge summaries (OR 3.14; 95%CI: 2.20-4.18). In summary, electronic discharge summaries offer some improvements over paper discharge summaries in terms of the quality of medication information documented. However, explanations of changes to medication regimens remained low, despite this being crucial information. Future efforts should focus on including the rationale for changes to medication regimens in discharge summaries.

Home and community care services: a major opportunity for preventive health care.

BACKGROUND: In Australia, the Home and Community Care (HACC) program provides services in the community to frail elderly living at home and their carers. Surprisingly little is known about the health of people who use these services. In this study we sought to describe health-related factors associated with use of HACC services, and to identify potential opportunities for targeting preventive services to those at high risk. METHODS: We obtained questionnaire data from the 45 and Up Study for 103,041 men and women aged 45 years and over, sampled from the general population of New South Wales, Australia in 2006-2007, and linked this with administrative data about HACC service use. We compared the characteristics of HACC clients and non-clients according to a range of variables from the 45 and Up Study questionnaire, and estimated crude and adjusted relative risks for HACC use with generalized linear models. RESULTS: 4,978 (4.8%) participants used HACC services in the year prior to completing the questionnaire. Increasing age, female sex, lower pre-tax household income, not having a partner, not being in paid work, Indigenous background and living in a regional or remote location were strongly associated with HACC use. Overseas-born people and those speaking languages other than English at home were significantly less likely to use HACC services. People who were underweight, obese, sedentary, who reported falling in the past year, who were current smokers, or who ate little fruit or vegetables were significantly more likely to use HACC services. HACC service use increased with decreasing levels of physical functioning, higher levels of psychological distress, and poorer self-ratings of health, eyesight and memory. HACC clients were more likely to report chronic health conditions, in particular diabetes, stroke, Parkinson's disease, anxiety and depression, cancer, heart attack or angina, blood clotting problems, asthma and osteoarthritis. CONCLUSIONS: HACC clients have high rates of modifiable lifestyle risk factors and health conditions that are amenable to primary and secondary prevention, presenting the potential for implementing preventive health care programs in the HACC service setting.