Objectives: Emergency Physicians utilize multiple patient information (PI) sources within Emergency Departments. Access to a centralized health record system is ideal but not always available to physicians. A technological gap exists in the context of PI sharing regarding patients’ representative and their in-situ involvement as an alternative PI source. The purpose of this study is to understand emergency physicians’ perceptions about patients’ representative and our design concept for improvement of PI sharing to physicians.
Methods: Observations focused on physician’s interaction with representatives were used to understand the emergency setting which led to a mobile PI sharing application design. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three experienced physicians to obtain their perceptions about the usefulness of our proposed design.
Results: Physicians shared their experiences about interactions with patient representatives and perceptions about potential use our proposed design concept. Physicians’ main problems during interaction with representatives were insufficient PI and occasional unfavorable attitudes. Regarding our design concept, physicians’ perceived benefits were reduced information-seeking time, reduced PI search actions, and reduced stress. Physicians’ perceived shortcomings were related inter-department PI sharing features and insufficient PI relating patients’ daily activities prior to admission and a do not resuscitate policy.
Conclusion: Physicians are willing to use our design concept in the future if concerns about security, upto- date PI and PI reliability are addressed. Although our current design concept focuses on the point of interaction between physicians and representatives, our scope will be widened to consider inter-ED PI sharing features and event-based PI.