Nurses must remember to execute multiple future tasks to ensure patient safety. We investigated the effect of visual cues on nurses' ability to remember future tasks. Experimental manipulation of cues in a representative intensive care unit simulation indicated that visual cues increase the likelihood that future tasks are executed.

Distractions and interruptions are frequently mentioned as sources of errors in healthcare research, and laboratory research has shown that they can disrupt cognition. However, the current evidence that distractions and interruptions cause patient harm is mixed. In two studies in an intensive care unit, we investigated whether and when distractions and interruptions might lead nurses to forget critical care tasks. Study 1 was an observational study using a mobile eye tracker. It investigated which properties of an interruption influence resumption times and how nurses manage distractions and interruptions. Study 2 was a controlled experiment in a full-scale patient simulator. It investigated whether reminders improve nurses' ability to remember routine tasks when multitasking and resume interrupted routine tasks. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of the studies.

Research into the development and adoption of new health technologies finds that information and communication technology (ICT) developers often fail to understand the clinical workplace, resulting in the implementation of costly systems that stakeholders reject. Here we report observations of the implementation of a well-designed new patient information system at a regional hospital. We used a combination of ethnographical and survey methods to assess stakeholders‘ uptake of and reactions to the new system. We found that even with a well-designed system, uptake can encounter challenges. We outline a number of important factors that may influence the success, or failure, of new ICT.

The increased use of health information technology in hospitals brings with it a growing need to appreciate the contexts in which health information technology may be used. Information flow and workflow are directly affected by the implementation of such technology. We present first steps towards a method that will help stakeholders evaluate the impact of technological change on work practice sufficiently early to influence the design and deployment of such technology. By using models of information flow and workflow based on how work actually occurs, analysts may better understand the relationships between the healthcare work and the proposed technological change. Models must be descriptive of healthcare work, must help the analyst evaluate work, and must help the analyst make conjectures about change. In this paper we evaluate whether the model notation is ready for testing with representative analysts, to see if the models help them envision the effects of technologies on work.