A Pilot Project Using Eye-Tracking Technology to Design a Standardised Anaesthesia Workspace

Özet

Objective: Maximising safe handoff procedures ensures patient safety. Anaesthesiology practices have primarily focused on developingbetter communication tools. However, these tools tend to ignore the physical layout of the anaesthesia workspace itself. Standardising theanaesthesia workspace has the potential to improve patient safety. The design process should incorporate end user feedback and objectivedata.Methods: This pilot project aims to design a standardised anaesthesia workspace using eye-tracking technology at a single university-affiliatedVeterans Affairs hospital. Twelve practising anaesthesiologists observed a series of images representing five clinical scenarios. Eachof these had a question prompting them to look for certain items commonly found in the anaesthesia workspace. Using eye-trackingtechnology, the gaze data of participants were recorded. These data were used to generate heat maps of the specific areas of interest in theworkspace that received the most fixation counts.Results: The laryngoscope and propofol had the highest percentages of gaze fixations on the left-hand side of the workstation, in closestproximity to the anaesthesiologist. Atropine, although the highest percentage of gaze fixations (33%) placed it on the right-hand side ofthe workstation, also had 25% of gaze fixations centred over the anaesthesia cart.Conclusion: Gaze fixation analyses showed that anaesthesiologists identified locations for the laryngoscope and propofol within easyreach and emergency medications further away. Because eye tracking can provide objective data to influence the design process, it may beuseful when developing standardised anaesthesia workspace templates for individual practices.