Information Chaos in Primary Care: Implications for Physician Performance and Patient Safety

Details

• Alternative Title:
  J Am Board Fam Med
• Personal Author:
  Beasley, John W ; Wetterneck, Tosha B. ; Temte, Jon ; Lapin, Jamie A ; Smith, Paul ; Rivera-Rodriguez, A. Joy ; Karsh, Ben-Tzion
• Description:
  Purpose ; The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of information chaos as it applies to the issues of patient safety and physician workload in primary care and to propose a research agenda. ; Methods ; We use a human factors engineering perspective to discuss the concept of information chaos in primary care and explore implications for its impact on physician performance and patient safety. ; Results ; Information chaos is comprised of various combinations of information overload, information underload, information scatter, information conflict, and erroneous information. We provide a framework for understanding information chaos, its impact on physician mental workload and situation awareness, its consequences, discuss possible solutions and suggest a research agenda which may lead to methods to reduce the problem. ; Conclusions ; Information chaos is experienced routinely by primary care physicians. This is not just inconvenient, annoying and frustrating; it has implications for physician performance and patient safety. Additional research is needed to define methods to measure and eventually reduce information chaos.
• Subjects:
  • Clinical Competence
  • Electronic Health Records
  • Ergonomics
  • Humans
  • Information Management
  • Patient Safety
  • Physicians
  • Practice Management, Medical
  • Primary Health Care
  • Workload
• Keywords:
  • Primary Health Care
  • Information Management/Informatics
  • Complexity Science
  • Medical Errors
  • Practice Management
• Source:
  J Am Board Fam Med. 24(6):745-751
• Pubmed ID:
  22086819
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC3286113
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  P20 HS017115/HS/AHRQ HHSUnited States/ ; UL1 RR025011/RR/NCRR NIH HHSUnited States/ ; 1UL1RR025011/RR/NCRR NIH HHSUnited States/ ; 1P20HS017115/HS/AHRQ HHSUnited States/ ; UL1 RR025011-03/RR/NCRR NIH HHSUnited States/ ; 1R18SH017899/SH/NCHS CDC HHSUnited States/
• Volume:
  24
• Issue:
  6
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/33309/cdc_33309_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 136.53 KB]
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:2a9d3bb497c94b3b7169080d868dad404ba0dfb3d62b829d87f2dffba22cc558