Health Care

Non-technical aspects of operating room work account for more adverse events than the lack of technical knowledge or expertise. Surgeons, nurses and staff working at the operating room need to improve four major groups of non-technical skills involved in the success in operations: task management, team working, situation awareness and decision making.

There are several aspects of communication between provider and patient that are key to both efficiency and patient well-being. From the communication of bad news, such as being diagnosed with cancer, to the importance of adapting the provider's language to the knowledge of the patient in order to avoid misunderstandings leading to potentially riskier situations. We study how health care workers can improve communication with patients both in an assertive and thoughtful way.

Errors in health care (e.g., providing the wrong drug or dose of it to a patient) can be fatal. These can be due to several factors, such as miscommunication or poorly designed tasks. Our approach consists in analysing the different tasks carried out by health care workers in order to identify the potential sources of error and redesign such tasks accordingly.