title: Assessing the effectiveness of five process elicitation methods: A case study of chemotherapy treatment plan review.
abstract: To reduce the probability of failures and to improve outcomes of safety-critical human-intensive processes, such as health care processes, it is important to be able to rigorously analyze such processes. The quality of that analysis often depends on having an accurate, detailed, and sufficiently complete understanding of the process being analyzed, where this understanding is typically represented as a formal process model that could then drive various rigorous analysis approaches. Developing this understanding and the corresponding formal process model may be difficult and, thus, a variety of process elicitation methods are often used. The work presented in this paper evaluates the effectiveness of five common elicitation methods in terms of their ability to elicit detailed process information necessary to support rigorous process analysis. These methods are employed to elicit typical steps and steps for responding to exceptional situations in a safety-critical health care process, the chemotherapy treatment plan review process. The results indicate strengths and weaknesses of each of the elicitation methods and suggest that it is preferable to apply multiple elicitation methods.
authors.affiliation: Department of Engineering, Quinnipiac University, Hamden, CT, USA. Electronic address: stefan.christov@qu.edu.
authors.forename: Stefan C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Christov
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Jenna L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Marquard
authors.affiliation: College of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA.
authors.forename: George S
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Avrunin
authors.affiliation: College of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Lori A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Clarke
mesh_terms: D000553:Ambulatory Care / Q000592:standards*; D000554:Ambulatory Care Facilities; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D010347:Patient Care Planning / Q000592:standards*; D017064:Process Assessment, Health Care / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents
keywords: Elicitation methods; Exception handling; Human-intensive process; Safety; Workflow understanding