Bmc Med Inform Decis
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2007
Randomized Controlled TrialMedical communication and technology: a video-based process study of the use of decision aids in primary care consultations.
Much of the research on decision-making in health care has focused on consultation outcomes. Less is known about the process by which clinicians and patients come to a treatment decision. This study aimed to quantitatively describe the behaviour shown by doctors and patients during primary care consultations when three types of decision aids were used to promote treatment decision-making in a randomised controlled trial. ⋯ Irrespective of the arm of the trial, both patients' and GPs' behaviour showed that they were reciprocally engaged in these consultations. However, even in consultations aimed at promoting shared decision-making, GPs' were verbally dominant, and they worked primarily as information providers for patients. In addition, computer-based decision aids significantly prolonged the consultations, particularly the later phases. These data suggest that decision aids may not lead to more 'sharing' in treatment decision-making and that, in their current form, they may take too long to negotiate for use in routine primary care.
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2007
The effect of attitude to risk on decisions made by nurses using computerised decision support software in telephone clinical assessment: an observational study.
There is variation in the decisions made by telephone assessment nurses using computerised decision support software (CDSS). Variation in nurses' attitudes to risk has been identified as a possible explanatory factor. This study was undertaken to explore the effect of nurses' attitudes to risk on the decisions they make when using CDSS. The setting was NHS 24 which is a nationwide telephone assessment service in Scotland in which nurses assess health problems, mainly on behalf of out-of-hours general practice, and triage calls to self care, a service at a later date, or immediate contact with a service. ⋯ Much of the variation in decision-making by nurses using CDSS remained unexplained. There was no convincing evidence that nurses' attitudes to risk affected the decisions made. This may have been due to the limitations of the instrument used to measure risk attitude.
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Dec 2006
Randomized Controlled TrialUsability of a barcode scanning system as a means of data entry on a PDA for self-report health outcome questionnaires: a pilot study in individuals over 60 years of age.
Throughout the medical and paramedical professions, self-report health status questionnaires are used to gather patient-reported outcome measures. The objective of this pilot study was to evaluate in individuals over 60 years of age the usability of a PDA-based barcode scanning system with a text-to-speech synthesizer to collect data electronically from self-report health outcome questionnaires. ⋯ The results presented in this study offer insights regarding the feasibility, usability and effectiveness of using a barcode scanner with older adults as an electronic data entry method on a PDA. While participants in this study found their experience with the barcode scanning system enjoyable and learned to become proficient in its use, the responsiveness of the system constitutes a barrier to wide-scale use of such a system. Optimizing the graphical presentation of the information on paper should significantly increase the system's responsiveness.
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Hospital-based clinicians have been shown to use and attain benefits from online evidence systems. To our knowledge there have been no studies investigating whether and how ambulance officers use online evidence systems if provided. We surveyed ambulance officers to examine their knowledge and use of the Clinical Information Access Program (CIAP), an online evidence system providing 24-hour access to information to support evidence-based practice. ⋯ Over half of ambulance officers had not heard of CIAP. The proportion who knew about and used CIAP was also low. Reasons for this appear to be a work culture not convinced of CIAP's relevance to pre-hospital patient care and lack of access to CIAP at work. Ambulance officers who used CIAP accessed it primarily from home and valued it highly. Lack of access to CIAP at central work locations deprives ambulance officers of many of the benefits of an online evidence system.
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Feb 2006
A survey of factors affecting clinician acceptance of clinical decision support.
Real-time clinical decision support (CDS) integrated into clinicians' workflow has the potential to profoundly affect the cost, quality, and safety of health care delivery. Recent reports have identified a surprisingly low acceptance rate for different types of CDS. We hypothesized that factors affecting CDS system acceptance could be categorized as relating to differences in patients, physicians, CDS-type, or environmental characteristics. ⋯ Even though a majority of our clinical decision support suggestions are not explicitly followed, clinicians feel they are of benefit and would be even more beneficial if they had more time available to address them.