Papers by Catherine Burns
Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 2011
Healthcare institutions are known to be risky environments that still lag behind other industries... more Healthcare institutions are known to be risky environments that still lag behind other industries in the development and application of risk management tools. Awareness of risk is an important aspect of a risk management program. People depend on high awareness to take precautions to manage risk. The Situation Awareness framework describes how a person perceives elements of the environment, comprehends and projects its actions into the future, and analyzes the cognitive process used. Consequently, it allows the integration of the cognitive model and the risk assessment model into one single framework, provides a means of examining if the risk awareness is calibrated to the true risk levels of the institutions, and a better understanding of the issues with adverse events notification systems. In this paper we discuss how the situation awareness model can be used in the assessment of risk awareness, for understanding risk awareness and safety culture, and finally, for designing more effective risk management systems. For the purpose of this paper, we focus on the adverse event notification system.
Motivation -In this paper we discuss the beginning of a research project into the design of user ... more Motivation -In this paper we discuss the beginning of a research project into the design of user interfaces for Computer Algebra Systems (CASs). Research approach -Findings/Design -We begin to examine a theoretical framework describing how people learn problem-solving skills. We also briefly discuss a field study we conducted. Research limitations/Implications -The field study, while small and preliminary, allowed us to see some areas where students ran in to difficulty using Maple. The theoretical framework we begin to outline should help us understand the cause of some of those difficulties. Originality/Value -We begin to better understand how people use CASs to learn mathematics. We also begin to combine Cognitive Load Theory and the Skills-Rules-Knowledge framework. Take away message -This is the beginning of a research project that should help us better understand how CASs can be better designed to assist with learning and the problem-solving process.
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2013
Proceedings of the International Symposium on Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care, 2014
Research indicates that behavior change interventions can assist patients' performance with respe... more Research indicates that behavior change interventions can assist patients' performance with respect to their health, and empower them to take a proactive role in their well-being. The objective of this research was to identify features that make remote health-monitoring systems more effective. To that end, a persuasive design approach was used to design a prototype application that encourages patients to consult their home monitoring devices appropriately. An exploratory user study was conducted to evaluate participants' opinions about the developed prototype, their preferences, as well as their concerns regarding the different components of the mockup. In addition to the exploratory study, a comparative study was conducted, in which a conventionally designed health application was compared with a newly designed engagement application. The results of the study showed no difference on quantitative measures but participant preferences still indicated the engagement design may have potential.
Journal of healthcare information management: JHIM
Today's nursing environment is complex, with many sources of data that are often poorly displ... more Today's nursing environment is complex, with many sources of data that are often poorly displayed. Ecological interface design (EID) is a systematic approach to designing interfaces to complex systems. EID has been used to design interfaces for aviation displays, power plant monitoring and control, human hemodynamic monitoring, anesthesia monitoring, and neonatal intensive care monitoring and diagnosis. EID makes critical relationships easily visible, eliminating the mental workload of integrating, calculating, or remembering multiple values. This paper reviews past experimental studies of EID in healthcare applications and discusses the application of EID to a decision-support tool for diabetic patients using personal digital assistants. The authors also discuss other contributions that EID could make to the nursing process in the areas of physiological monitoring, decision support, database design, and the measurement and analysis of nurse-sensitive outcomes, including patient...
This paper explores Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA), a hierarchical analytical methodology typicall... more This paper explores Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA), a hierarchical analytical methodology typically used for deriving design requirements to support single operators, and reworks this methodology into a version that supports successful team collaboration. As an extension to CWA for teamwork environments, Team Cognitive Work Analysis (Team CWA) suggests techniques and models that leverage the synergy between social organization analysis and the available guidelines of CWA for individual work analysis. In this paper, team-suitable approaches are presented for the last two steps of Team CWA, Team Strategies Analysis (Team StA) and Team Worker Competencies Analysis (Team WCA). At the strategy level, Team StA supplements traditional CWA techniques and models with an examination of (1) operational strategies, (2) coordination strategies, (3) team development strategies, and (4) structural strategies. At the worker competencies level, Team WCA consolidates the requirements imposed by the pr...
This is the executive summary for the full report for the Canadian Patient Safety Institute 2008.
Poor labelling is a contributing factor of medication errors. To predict potential human errors i... more Poor labelling is a contributing factor of medication errors. To predict potential human errors in the process of reading the container labels for injectable medications, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) was applied to the label reading process. The implementation of FMEA involved various challenges including difficulties in repre-senting a context-sensitive process, defining the failure modes, their causes and effects and developing rating scales for criticality. The identified failure modes were rated via a focus group of healthcare professionals. The results of the FMEA will be applied to improve existing label designs to prevent potential medication errors that may result from human errors in the label reading process.
Poor labelling is a contributing factor of medication errors. As a part of the study that aims to... more Poor labelling is a contributing factor of medication errors. As a part of the study that aims to evaluate and improve the labelling of ampoules and vials for injectable drugs, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) was applied on the label reading process. Implementing the FMEA on the low-level reading process involved various challenges including diffi-culties in representing a context-sensitive process, defining the failure modes, causes and effects and developing rating scales for criticality (i.e. severity, frequency and detectability). The failure modes were rated via a focus group of pharma-cists and a nurse. The results will help us redesign existing labels to prevent medication errors that may result from hu-man errors in the label reading process.
led to novel display objects for a prospective clinical decision support system for radiotherapy ... more led to novel display objects for a prospective clinical decision support system for radiotherapy delivery, identifying links between clinical and regulatory purposes in healthcare delivery. Dutch national wait times policy and clinical decisions were linked, revealing alignment between regulatory policy and medicine toward the same overall purposes, leading to display designs that explicitly use information from both drivers to support treatment decisions. One display object highlights differences between probability distributions for a "standard prognosis" defined automatically by maximum wait times and "actual prognosis" defined manually for the individual patient case. Another object links wait times classification and pain monitoring. Using the Mosby scale "severe" threshold, discrete measurements were enhanced by visualizing the integral of severe pain endured over time. The two display objects were aligned on the time--to--irradiation axis, creating situation awareness for this decision--task with respect to pain, outcomes, and wait times compliance. The means--ends Abstraction Hierarchy (Vicente, 1999) uncovered the principles of time--dependent survival, compliance, and patient--centered care. The ensuing information requirements (expressed as variables and mathematical relationships), with simultaneous design of the display objects demonstrated the practical benefits of EID as a framework--based methodology.
Primary care data is unique in all healthcare systems. It is hoped primary care data could be use... more Primary care data is unique in all healthcare systems. It is hoped primary care data could be used for a variety of secondary purposes, such as public health surveillance. Unfortunately, primary physicians are left without dedicated clerical support for this task and must include it in their daily responsibilities, and the quality of primary care data is very low. We define Pavlov's Doc as a persona for which we hope to design an appropriate user interface: a user who can be motivated and engaged to use the system's features and code data accurately. We review general options for incentives and engagement, and make note of current successful uses of social comparison information towards behaviour change. We propose several recommendations towards engaging Pavlov's Doc and incorporating behavioural insights to user interface designs in healthcare, and recommend further research towards this goal.<?>Primary care data is unique in all healthcare systems. Whereas hospi...
Finance is a complex domain largely unexplored in the human factors literature. Modern financial ... more Finance is a complex domain largely unexplored in the human factors literature. Modern financial trading systems involve a variety of coupled socio-technical systems (e.g. humans and technologies) and have become highly automated. Recent stock market crashes, such as the well-known Flash Crash, show automation-initiated dynamics. This suggests that a human factors understanding of this environment may be useful. In this article, we report an initial attempt to model buyer-side Automated Trading (AT) systems using a Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) approach. A Work Domain Analysis (WDA) model is presented to describe the automated financial trading domain. This work has implications for applying CWA to finance but also advances the understanding of how to model a highly automated domain.
Health care can be categorized as a complex socio-technical system. Often, similar projects or sy... more Health care can be categorized as a complex socio-technical system. Often, similar projects or systems experience very different outcomes during implementation. To better understand the differentiating success factors when comparing projects or systems, we argue there is a need to systematically compare complex socio-technical systems. While Cognitive Engineering offers many methods for analyzing complex socio-technical systems, such as Cognitive Work Analysis, few methods support a comparison paradigm. We propose using Cognitive Work Analysis and using it to compare two similar socio-technical systems through Comparative Cognitive Work Analysis. Through parallel phases to Cognitive Work Analysis, the comparative method allows for the identification of differentiating factors, which we call Junctions, and allows practitioners to identify design opportunities to introduce success interventions into existing designs. Future work will involve further development of this concept and its...
In a number of domains involving decision making under high time pressure, the appearance of an u... more In a number of domains involving decision making under high time pressure, the appearance of an unexpected critical event can startle operators causing errors that may potentially lead to a chain reaction of unfavorable events. Simulating such situations in a laboratory requires overcoming several challenges tied to human responses to unexpected and rare critical events. We discuss cases of experimental studies that have incorporated simulations, critical events, interruptions, predictive displays and ecological displays involving naïve and expert participants. We spell out guidelines and caveats pertaining to training, expertise, temporal variables, critical event frequencies, scenario design, mediator and moderator variables to name a few. The guidelines and caveats may inform researchers in the design of generalizable and reproducible experiments and in the analysis of data.
Cognition, Technology & Work, 2015
Received:28 O ct ober2014/A ccepted:21 M ay 2015 The A ut hor(s)2015.Thi s art i cl e i s publ i ... more Received:28 O ct ober2014/A ccepted:21 M ay 2015 The A ut hor(s)2015.Thi s art i cl e i s publ i shed w it h open access atSpri ngerl i nk. com A bstract G row t h ofnovelsm al l -scal e t echnol ogi es (m icro-and nanot echnol ogy)i s expect ed t o change t he nat ure of w ork i n t he fut ure.Current l y,H um an Fact ors and Ergonom i cs (H FE) research i n sm al l -scal e t echnologi es, especi al l y nanot echnol ogy,i s i n i t s i nfancy.Si nce sm al lscale t echnol ogi es are expect ed t o br i ng about radi cal changes, al i gni ng H FE t o t hese t echnologi es al l ow s for usabl e product s from t he i ncept i on, rat her t han an aft ert hought .Thi s paper present s an et hnographi c st udy conduct ed on l ab-on-a-chi p (LO C) t echnol ogy i n t he area of sm all -scal e flui di cs.LO C devi ces are sm al ldevi ces w here l aboratory processes are shrunk i nt o m i ni at ure si ze,oft en no bi gger t han a credi t card. LO C t echnol ogy prom i ses l ow -cost poi nt -of-care devi ces i n heal t h care, as w el l as appl i cat i ons i n ot her em ergi ng sect ors. In t hi s st udy,t he fabri cat i on and t est i ng of t he LO C devi ces usi ng soft l i t hography t echni ques w ere addressed in det ai l . Speci fical l y, i t i s show n t hat devi ce fabri cat i on i n t he l aboratory ent ai l s a consi derabl e am ountof ski l l ed w orkm anshi p on partoft he researcher.Furt her,t hi s st udy w as conduct ed at a research l aborat ory at t he U ni versi t y of W at erl oo.A ddressi ng l aborat ory research as a dom ai n of study i s a novel vent ure f or H FE. W i t h t he grow t h of uni versit i es as m aj orpl ayers i n t he i nnovat i on system ,t he uni versit y research l aborat ory hasem erged asan i m port ant aspect of t he com m erci al i zat i on and t echnol ogy t ransfer process.Thus,conduct i ng research i n uni versit y l aborat ori esw i l l ,i n t he l ong run,al l ow H FE professional st o pl ay a great errol ei n t hei nnovat i on processl i nki ng t he uni versit y, i ndust ry and soci et y. Thus, em phasi zi ng t he pri nci pl e: good econom ics requi res good ergonom ics. K eyw ords Lab-on-a-chip Et hnography U ni versit y research N anot echnology W orkm anshi p 1 Int roducti on G overnm ent s across t he w orl d recogni ze t hatnovelt echnol ogi es w i l l have a m aj or i m pacton soci ety ( European Com m i ssi on 2011;N ordm ann 2004;Roco and Bai nBri dge 2013; Roco et al . 2013). Si m i l arl y, H um an Fact ors and Ergonom i cs(H FE)researchersnot et hatt headventoft hese new t echnol ogi esw i l lchange t he m anneri n w hi ch w ork i s conduct ed (H ol l nagel2014).Prom i nentam ong t hese novel t echnologi es i s nanot echnol ogy.N anot echnol ogy research hasprovi ded i m pet ust o t he developm entofal arge array of m at eri al s and devi ces.These product s of nanotechnol ogy are r api dl y bei ng em pl oyed i n a var i et y of dom ai ns, rangi ng from m anufact uri ng t o heal t h car e ( CPI 2014; Roco etal .2013).H FE vi sionari es have al so em phasized t he rol e ofnanot echnol ogy for t he fut ure ofsoci et y (K arw ow ski2006;Szew czyk 2014).Current l y,t he em phasi sof H FE research rel ated t o nanot echnol ogy has been l argel y focused on heal t h ( G reaves-H ol m es 2012; N IO SH 2013; W HO 2013),possibl e use of nanom ateri al s for desi gn ergonom i cs (Chow dhury etal .2012),devel opi ng count ri es (Ri zvi et al . 2009) and sust ainabi l i t y ( Y ang and M i ao 2010).W e expand t hi sl i stby focusi ng ourw ork on desi gn of nano-and m i cro-devi ces.Speci ficall y,w e present t w o m ai n cont ri but i ons.Fi rst,w e presentan et hnographi cst udy addressing H FE and nanot echnol ogy i n l ab-on-a-chi p t echnology (LO C
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Papers by Catherine Burns