A Taxonomy of Situation Awareness Failure Factors in Primary Care

Abstract: General Practitioners (GPs) report frustration in locating, customising and prioritising data in Electronic Health Records, which impairs their situation awareness (SA) and consequently impacts decision making and quality of care. Gaining SA in primary care before and during the clinical consultation is challenging, mainly due to barriers including time constraints, fragmented data, limitations in GP-patient interaction, usability issues of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) and information overload. This is enhanced with an increasing ageing population, and patients with multimorbidity. Timely and effective communication of information through data visualizations and visual analytics are promising avenues to address some of the GPs situation awareness needs and barriers, potentially supporting clinicians in making more accurate and rapid decisions. In this paper we propose a taxonomy of situation awareness failure factors in Primary Care, based on interviews with Primary Care GPs and Endsley’s SA error taxonomy. We then discuss design implications towards enhancing situation awareness in Primary Care when using EHR systems, supporting the potential of holistic visualisations to enhance SA before and during the clinical consultation.

Keywords: Situation Awareness, Decision Making, Primary Care, General Practitioner, GP, Electronic Health Record

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1003473

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