Patient safety and quality of care: How may clinical simulation contribute?

Abstract

The usability of health information technology (IT) is increasingly recognized as critically important to the development of systems that ensure patient safety and quality of care. The substantial complexity of organizations, work practice and physical environments within the healthcare sector influences the development and application of health IT. When health IT is introduced in local clinical work practices, potential patient safety hazards and insufficient support of work practices need to be examined. Qualitative methods, such as clinical simulation, may be used to evaluate new technology in correlation with the clinical context and to study the interaction between users, technology and work practice. Compared with the “classic” methods, such as heuristic inspection and usability testing, clinical simulation takes the clinical context into account. Clinical simulation can be useful in many processes in the human-centred design cycle. In the requirement specification, clinical simulation can be useful to analyze user requirements and work practice as well to evaluate requirements. In the design of health IT, clinical simulation can be used to evaluate clinical information systems and serve as common ground to help to achieve a shared understanding between various communities of practice. In a public procurement process, a clinical simulation-based assessment can help give insight into different solutions and how they support work practice. Before organizational implementation, clinical simulation is a very suitable means, by which to assess an application in connection with work practice.