Design Solutions for Operating Rooms

Team: Xinli Lin, SzuYing Ching

Duration: 08/2014-12/2014

Personal Contribution: Design Research, Research Analysis, Communication Design

Project Background

For this project, we worked for an local teaching hospital to examine, analyze and model the use of information in an Operation Room setting.
Being exposed to such a high-protocol environment as an OR setting, we were allowed to observe the OR information system in action, leading to the analysis of different types of information and its use, flows of such information in correspondence to tasks performed, various modes in which information/data is conveyed, levels of various information, in terms of urgency, criticality, etc. This analysis further led to visualization of complex information for allowing further analysis, understanding, and improvement of the system.

My Contribution

I was focusing on the redesign of preference card, which is a communication tool used for scheduling, tool preparation and suppliances arrangement and billing between different stakeholders involved in a operation.

Our design concept mainly derives from our finding that different stakeholders have various focuses and needs while using preference card. Based on our investigation, we create visualizations to help us understand concepts around preference card. Journey map focuses on the work flow around preference card from creation to revision, while communication network indicates the information flow between various stakeholders. With these understandings, we generate important features to leverage preference card to meet various stakeholders’ needs.

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Based on interviews and observations, we define 4 stages of interactions around preference card.

“Create” refers to the very beginning when a new preference card is added based on surgeon’s previous card or created by the specialty manager.
A preference card is "activated" when a scheduler schedules a case and picks up a corresponding preference card in Epic system.
“In Use” is when CSP and OR nurses refer to preference card during work for different purposes.
And preference card is usually “updated” by specialty manager according to suggestions from surgeons or OR nurses after procedures.

Once a preference card is created, it enter in to a looping process of “Activated”, “ In Use” and “Updated”, influencing each other.

Summarize Communication among Stakeholders

This diagram visualized the communication between stakeholders in different interaction stages.

We can tell from this diagram that:

The surgeons and OR nurses are the main stakeholders of preference cards. Specialty manager is only involved in “Created” and “Updated” stages, which indicates a gap in “Activated” and “In Use” stages.
Surgeon and OR nurse need more concrete communication when the OR nurse is trying to customize preference card according to surgeon’s preference at “Activated” stage.
Additionally, after surgery, specialty manager need concrete feedback from surgeon and OR nurse to update preference card in time.

Defining Problem(pain point) and Opportunity Through Research

We collected interview quotes about the preference card from various stakeholders. The preference card is mainly related to three tasks: tool preparation, communication, and billing. We clustered interview quotes into problems and opportunities, came up with design themes of customization, efficientcy, acccuracy, update, consistency, informing and budgeting to further inform our design.

Redesign Concepts- Customized Information and Features

Feedbacks from Stakeholder

At the end of this project, we created posters to demonstrate our defined problem and solutions to our stakeholders. In order to engage more hospital staff and gather their feedback, the posters were hang in the hallway in doctor's office area.