Remote Communications between Patients and General Practitioners: Do Patients Choose the Most Effective Communication Routes?

The use of remote communication between patients and general practitioners has greatly increased worldwide, especially following the COVID-19 outbreak. Yet, it is important to evaluate the impact of this shift on healthcare quality. This study aimed at evaluating remote healthcare quality by comparing four remote patient-to-physician communication modes used in Israel. The research methodology entailed criteria-based analysis conducted by healthcare quality experts and a subjective patient-perception questionnaire regarding the healthcare quality attributed to each mode and the extent to which each mode was used. Our findings indicate that the extent to which each mode is used was found to be inversely related to its rated quality. As such, the common assumption whereby patients tend to choose the mode of communication that will most likely ensure high service quality is refuted. Our findings also indicate that remote services often hinder the physician's understanding of the patient's clinical issues, as patients encounter difficulties in correctly articulating and conveying them; such services also hinder the patient's understanding of the recommended course of treatment. These findings should be addressed by policymakers for improving remote communication services to ensure optimal healthcare service quality.

Caring for COVID-19 patients: Nurses' perceptions of the most critical issues and their impact on their well-being and performance.

AIMS: (1) Exploring nurses' perceptions of issues that impacted the quality of patient care and their own performance on COVID-19 wards; (2) examining nurses' perceptions of how these issues impacted their psychological state and level of performance; and (3) presenting recommendations for improving healthcare policies. BACKGROUND: Nurses played a critical role in caring for hospitalized COVID-19 patients and managing the disease. METHODS: Semistructured interviews were conducted with 50 nurses (32 females), aged 31-58 years, 6-37 years' tenure, from eight hospitals across Israel. Prior to working in COVID-19 wards, they worked in internal medicine, emergency rooms, or intensive care units. Based on the COREQ checklist, these interviews were recorded and transcribed, and categorized into themes and subthemes. FINDINGS: The findings indicate that the unpreparedness of healthcare systems for the pandemic outbreak rendered nurses paying a high price at the personal and professional levels, which in turn may have impacted the levels of care that they provided. CONCLUSION: The rich, qualitative data source revealed important interactions between clinical, personal, social, and familial factors in determining distress levels and performance impairment. A nuanced understanding of the link between these stressors is key to developing and implementing policies that could mitigate deficiencies in the management of epidemics and pandemics in the future. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING AND HEALTH POLICIES: Changes should be made to government directives and healthcare policies, with an emphasis on increasing the nursing workforce, providing emotional support, ensuring availability of equipment and beds, optimizing work practices, developing transparent means of communication within teams, and clearly defining the areas of responsibility of nurses-in times of routine and crises.

Evaluating teamwork among medical staff: How to measure and compare aspects of the team mental models of doctors and nurses.

Shared perceptions of a task among those responsible for its completion are important for achieving successful outcomes. This study proposes a framework for eliciting various aspects of team members' "mental models" (TMMs) of complex medical tasks. The intention is to provide 'proof of concept' for a methodology to measure similarities and differences between team members' perceptions of selected attributes of the task. Applying our framework in a gynecology ward, we use cognitive interviewing and concept mapping to reveal differences between the TMMs of doctor and nurse teams. These group differences are found to reflect limited awareness of the other group's level of involvement, workload, responsibilities and contributions to quality of care. We argue that such differences may lead to frustration, conflict, poor teamwork and risks to patient safety; but once identified, and subject to certain limitations, the differences could be used to develop interventions that will enhance teamwork.

Erratum to "Digital wayfinding systems in hospitals: A qualitative evaluation based on managerial perceptions and considerations before and after implementation" [Appl. Ergon. 90 (2020) 103260].

Despite the benefits that digital wayfinding systems offer hospital visitors and patients as well as the hospitals themselves, their actual presence in hospitals is low. This study, carried out in twenty hospitals, presents an evaluation of these systems. Interviews with hospital managers (with and without systems) indicate considerations and evidence-based information that are new to the literature such as reducing task complexity and overall user stress and anxiety; enhancing user control and empowerment; decreasing the amount of time medical staff must devote to providing directions to patients; and reducing rate of delayed and missed appointments. While these systems have considerable potential for assisting the elderly and those with disabilities, this potential is not being realized. Findings may benefit system planners, hospital administrators and eventually provide users with more suitable systems upon which to rely.

A group-level approach to analyzing participative ergonomics (PE) effectiveness: The relationship between PE dimensions and employee exposure to injuries.

Most studies concerned with participative ergonomic (PE) interventions, focus on organizational rather than group level analysis. By implementing an intervention at a manufacturing plant, the current study, utilizing advanced information systems, measured the effect of line-supervisor leadership on employee exposure to risks. The study evaluated which PE dimensions (i.e., extent of workforce involvement, diversity of reporter role types and scope of analysis) are related to such exposure at the group level. The data for the study was extracted from two separate computerized systems (workforce medical records of 791 employees and an intranet reporting system) during a two-year period. While the results did not confirm the effect of line-supervisor leadership on subordinates' exposure to risks, they did demonstrate relationships between PE dimensions and the employees' exposure to risks. The results support the suggested level of analysis and demonstrate that group-based analysis facilitates the assimilation of preventive interventions.

Evaluating the inclusivity of hospital wayfinding systems for people with diverse needs and abilities.

OBJECTIVES: Wayfinding in hospitals is a complex problem since patients, who are likely to be under stress, may have to navigate their way to multiple locations in the course of a single visit. While good wayfinding design can reduce stress, poor wayfinding can not only increase individuals' anxiety but also generate additional costs for the hospital due to: lost time among staff members who need to direct patients rather than concentrate on their designated task; missed appointments or delayed meetings; and additional security staff to ensure that patients do not enter restricted areas. We investigated to what extent a questionnaire, developed by collecting data about the subjective experiences of wayfinders with diverse needs and abilities, could uncover wayfinding problems in hospitals. METHODS: The methodology we developed involved four steps: creating an initial questionnaire based on the literature; customizing the questionnaire to a hospital environment; validating and verifying the questionnaire; and evaluating the questionnaire's added value at nine other hospitals. RESULTS: The questionnaire's generality and added value were demonstrated since many types of wayfinding problems were uncovered at the nine hospitals that other methods had overlooked or regarded as relatively unimportant. The research emphasizes the centrality and uniqueness of the wayfinder rather than that of the institute in determining what people need. CONCLUSION: Our findings can contribute to understanding wayfinding issues in hospitals and to sensitize designers to the needs and knowledge levels of wayfinders when designing hospitals.

A framework for performing workplace hazard and risk analysis: a participative ergonomics approach.

Despite the unanimity among researchers about the centrality of workplace analysis based on participatory ergonomics (PE) as a basis for preventive interventions, there is still little agreement about the necessary of a theoretical framework for providing practical guidance. In an effort to develop a conceptual PE framework, the authors, focusing on 20 studies, found five primary dimensions for characterising an analytical structure: (1) extent of workforce involvement; (2) analysis duration; (3) diversity of reporter role types; (4) scope of analysis and (5) supportive information system for analysis management. An ergonomics analysis carried out in a chemical manufacturing plant serves as a case study for evaluating the proposed framework. The study simultaneously demonstrates the five dimensions and evaluates their feasibility. The study showed that managerial leadership was fundamental to the successful implementation of the analysis; that all job holders should participate in analysing their own workplace and simplified reporting methods contributed to a desirable outcome. PRACTITIONER SUMMARY: This paper seeks to clarify the scope of workplace ergonomics analysis by offering a theoretical and structured framework for providing practical advice and guidance. Essential to successfully implementing the analytical framework are managerial involvement, participation of all job holders and simplified reporting methods.

Human factors-focused reporting system for improving care quality and safety in hospital wards.

OBJECTIVE: The aim was to develop a reporting system for collecting human factors problem reports to establish a database to guide activities for improving health care quality and patient safety. BACKGROUND: The current error and incident report systems do not provide sufficient and adequate coverage of the factors contributing to impaired safety and care quality. They fail to examine the range of difficulties that clinical staff encounters in the conduct of daily work. METHOD: A voluntary problem-reporting system was developed to be used by hospital wards' clinicians and was tested in four wards of two hospitals in Israel. The system is based on human factors--formatted problem reports submitted by physicians and nurses on difficulties and hazards they confront in their daily work. Reports are grouped and evaluated by a team of human factor professionals. RESULTS: A total of 359 reports were collected in the wards during 12 weeks, as compared with a total of 200 incidents reports that were collected during a period of 5 years with the existing obligatory incident reporting system. In-depth observational studies conducted on the wards confirmed the ability of the new system to highlight major human factors problems, differentially identifying specific problems in each of the wards studied. Problems reported were directly related to general factors affecting care quality and patient safety. CONCLUSION: Validation studies confirmed the reliability of the reporting system in pinpointing major problems per investigated unit according to its specific characteristics. APPLICATION: This type of reporting system could fill an important information gap with the potential to be a cost-effective initial database source to guide human factors efforts to improve care quality, reduce errors, and increase patient safety.

Safety management by walking around (SMBWA): a safety intervention program based on both peer and manager participation.

"Management by walking around" (MBWA) is a practice that has aroused much interest in management science and practice. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate adaptation of this practice to safety management. We describe a three-year long case study that collected empirical data in which a modified MBWA was practiced in order to improve safety in a semiconductor fabrication facility. The main modification involved integrating an information system with the MBWA in order to create a practice that would generate safety leadership development and an organizational safety learning mechanism, while promoting employee safety participation. The results of the case study demonstrate that the SMBWA practice facilitated thousands of tours in which safety leadership behaviors were practiced by managers and by employees (employees performed five times as many tours as managers). The information system collected information about safety behaviors and safety conditions that could not otherwise be obtained. Thus, this study presents a new organizational safety practice SMBWA, and demonstrates the ways in which SMBWA may improve safety in organizations.

Intel's incident-free culture: a case study.

The occupational ergonomic program that Intel's newly established manufacturing plant in Israel implemented in 1997 helped prevent injuries and also marked the launch of a whole new approach to ergonomics. A key element in the success of the seven-point program was a strong commitment from management, which came to regard this plan as a vital strategic element in the new plant's success. Comprehensive, top-down planning imposed obligations on all elements in the manufacturing spectrum, from suppliers to contractors to employees. Work requirements were set; cooperation with the plant's occupational health professionals was established; and long-term reporting and instruction systems were developed. Extensive ergonomic training was a crucial factor in integrating ergonomic procedures into the organization's day-to-day activities. Along with this instructional program, ergonomic engineers implemented a strict measuring system to ensure that each ergonomic activity would be performed according to schedule. By the time the factory opened its gates and began to produce, a vigorous ergonomic environment had emerged and employees were displaying an ergonomic mindset that also impinged upon their non-work activities. As a result of the successful implementation of the program, Intel's ergonomic program has become a model for Israeli industry. This paper presents a full ergonomic program that besides supplying the Intel plant with solutions was unique enough to impact the whole Israeli industry.