Reference: Rosenal, T. W.; Forsythe, D. E.; Musen, M. A.; & Seiver, A. Support for Information Management in Critical Care: A new approach to identify needs. Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Medical Computer Science, September, 1995.
Abstract: Managing information is necessary to support clinical decision making and action in critical care. By understanding the nature of information management and its relationship to sound clinical practice, we should come to use technology more wisely. We demonstrated that a new approach inspired by ethnographic research methods could identify useful and unexpected findings about clinical information management. Our approach was to use a clinician experienced in a specific domain (critical care in this instance), with advice from a medical anthropologist, to perform a short-term observational study of information management in that domain. We identified 8 areas in a critical care unit in which information management was seriously in need of better support. We also found interesting similarities and differences in how these needs were viewed by nurses and physicians.