On designing a usable interactive system to support transplant nursing.
Solid organ transplant has been steadily increasing in number both nationally and internationally. Caring for the transplant patients in the hospital setting, right after the patient is moved from the intensive care unit to the ward, is one of the most challenging tasks in nursing. It involves many procedures, rigid protocols, tight monitoring, and intensive data gathering for use by the other coordinating healthcare professionals. The complexity is further increased when a nurse has to take care of several transplant patients in a single shift. Of late, there has been a growth of computer applications in nursing and clinical information systems. Their acceptability and usability determine the ultimate success of computer support for this complex task. In this paper, we present a case study in which we combine two well-known software engineering techniques--namely, agile programming and user centered design--toward the goal of developing an interactive system for supporting the activities of transplant nurses in a hospital setting. This has resulted in a usable end-product and the user centered approach has motivated the nurses to move towards the use of computers in their jobs for better productivity. The product's usability was formally evaluated and is reported herein. The strengths and limitations of this approach are also discussed. The software product developed has been well accepted and is currently being planned to replace the manual methods followed in the transplant ward of a large metropolitan hospital.
Narasimhadevara
A
A
Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Que., Canada H3G 1M8.
Radhakrishnan
T
T
Leung
B
B
Jayakumar
R
R
D002170:Canada; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D009732:Nursing Care / Q000379:methods*; D009737:Nursing Records; D012984:Software; D012985:Software Design; D013813:Therapy, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D014180:Transplantation / Q000451:nursing*; D014584:User-Computer Interface