Biomedical subjects

Ann Blandford

Publications and source records attributed to Ann Blandford.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Patient information needs: pre- and post-consultation.

This paper presents findings from a study of information seeking behaviour by National Health Service patients which explored motivational triggers for infor- mation needs. Previous research has highlighted the importance of contextual elements in users' changing information needs. This paper highlights how those needs may centre on specific events: in particular, a patient's consultation with their doctor. Patients initiate information seeking to assess whether they need clinical intervention, in preparation for the patient-doctor consultation and to verify the diagnosis or treatment stemming from that consultation. The study has revealed that having confidence in health practitioners is one key motiva- tion for information seeking. Another is a desire to use health service resources judiciously, efficiently and effectively.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Implementing digital resources for clinicians' and patients' varying needs.

This paper presents an overview of several evidence-based medicine and patient information studies conducted across the UK health service over a 4 year period, investigating clinicians', managers', and patients' perceptions of digital resources (primarily digital libraries) in hospitals, Primary Care Trusts, NHS Direct (patient call centre) and patient groups. In-depth interviews and focus groups are analysed using grounded theory methodologies and through content analysis used to produce quantitative finding. The perceived impacts of three different methods employed for delivering health informatics are presented. The findings highlight some generic issues relevant for health informatics in the UK health sector as well as some specific issues for medical digital libraries. This paper reviews in more detail the issues of medical technology implementation (traditional implementation, on the wards, and intermediaries within in communities). A breakdown of the clinicians' and patients' information journey (information initiation, facilitation and interpretation) is also presented with regard to medical digital libraries and online resources. Broad guidelines derived from these findings are provided for health-informatics deployment.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Understanding emergency medical dispatch in terms of distributed cognition: a case study.

Emergency medical dispatch (EMD) is typically a team activity, requiring fluid coordination and communication between team members. Such working situations have often been described in terms of distributed cognition (DC), a framework for understanding team working. DC takes account of factors such as shared representations and artefacts to support reasoning about team working. Although the language of DC has been developed over several years, little attention has been paid to developing a methodology or reusable representation which supports reasoning about an interactive system from a DC perspective. We present a case study in which we developed a method for constructing a DC account of team working in the domain of EMD, focusing on the use of the method for describing an existing EMD work system, identifying sources of weakness in that system, and reasoning about the likely consequences of redesign of the system. The resulting DC descriptions have yielded new insights into the design of EMD work and of tools to support that work within a large EMD centre.

Ambulances↗