Man vs machine in emergency medicine – a study on the effects of manual and automatic vital sign documentation on data quality and perceived workload, using observational paired sample data and questionnaires
- Resource Type
- article
- Authors
- Niclas Skyttberg; Rong Chen; Sabine Koch
- Source
- BMC Emergency Medicine, Vol 18, Iss 1, Pp 1-9 (2018)
- Subject
- Data quality
Automated documentation
Vital signs
Emergency department
Emergency medicine
Special situations and conditions
RC952-1245
Medical emergencies. Critical care. Intensive care. First aid
RC86-88.9
- Language
- English
- ISSN
- 1471-227X
Abstract Background Emergency medicine is characterized by a high patient flow where timely decisions are essential. Clinical decision support systems have the potential to assist in such decisions but will be dependent on the data quality in electronic health records which often is inadequate. This study explores the effect of automated documentation of vital signs on data quality and workload. Methods An observational study of 200 vital sign measurements was performed to evaluate the effects of manual vs automatic documentation on data quality. Data collection using questionnaires was performed to compare the workload on wards using manual or automatic documentation. Results In the automated documentation time to documentation was reduced by 6.1 min (0.6 min vs 7.7 min, p