No abstract

This thesis presents the desig.!1 and implementation of a Nursing Workload Manager module for a Patient Data Management System in an intensive care unit. The Nursing Workload Manager aids in the planning and documentation of the nurse#s workload. ft automates the generation of the nursing care plan and automatically assigns a score to the care plan based on a nursing workload mAasurement system.In the thesis a literature survey of patient data management systems, nursing workload measurement systems and system evaluation methods is presented. This is followcd by an overview of the work environment of an intensive care unit. The functionality of the Nursing Workload Manager is described and details of the software environmcnt and application implementation are discusscd. Finally, the results of il user evaluation of the module are presented, and future work on the module is discusscd. The financial support of FCAR and NSERC is gratefully appreciated.iii pl'lIlning and dinical administra tion.There arc many factors that contribute to the success of a patient data management system. The ~ystem must satisfy the functionaI requirements identified at its inception. ft mu"t be able to mtegratc ncw fllnctions or interact wilh external computing f(lcllitie~, and Ils user interface must be percelved as responsive, unobtnlslVC and "nm mal" User attitudes Lo computerizé1tion and to the patient data m.lnagement system must also be considered.One of the activll!rs of a nurse in the intensive care unit is to crea te a nursing carl' plan. This identifies the ll1sks required lo care for the patient Tasks such as initial as~essment of the' pcltien t and reasscssments, meeting patient care need5and plannmg and carrying out of interventIons lo mecl those nceds. The care plan may a150 be used by the hospital administration to measure the nursing workload Many workload measurements systems exist. The tasks on the care plan are then schcduled for the commg shift. The generation and scheduling of care plans and the measurement of nllrsing workload are weIl sllited ta computeriza-1

An automatic speech recognition system is being developed for a patient data management system (PDMS) for the pediatric intensive care unit (ICU) at the Montreal Children’s Hospital. Here, fourteen bedside monitors are linked by a local area network to a personal computer for real-time acquisition of vital sign data and the graphical display of trends. The PDMS also allows for the manual input of data, such as fluid balance data, by means of a keyboard and a pointing device. This paper presents a description of the multimodal human-computer interface of the bedside data entry system, focusing on the speech recognition and generation sub-systems and their integration in the OS/2 Presentation Manager environment.