Lessons from Tufte

This entry is part 6 of 7 in the series Tracking Systems

Most users (myself included) spend most of their time in front of a computer in a kind of fuzzy autopilot mode, and anything that creates ripples on that placid lake of unawareness is going to be noticed as a disproportionately significant problem. –David Harris, creator of Pegasus Mail In Icons, Pegagogic Vectors, Forms Design and […]

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Where is my [fill in the blank]? and Passive Tracking

This entry is part 4 of 7 in the series Tracking Systems

Where is the Chart!?!? If you visit different EDs, one of the most common tracking-type refrains you hear is “Where is Room 5’s chart? I’ve been looking for it for fifteen minutes!” Such problems delay ED patient care, and are one of the great motivators for moving to an all-electronic chart, one that can be […]

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The Magic Number 7 (or maybe 4?), Forced Errors, Triage, and Color-Blindness

This entry is part 3 of 7 in the series Tracking Systems

In its most pedantic definition, an ED tracking system is a system for tracking things in the ED. Tracking things that, well, things that we need to keep track of. People. Orders. Labs. Consults. Messages from docs. Many different bits of information that are needed to keep the ED running smoothly. One of the reasons […]

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Interruptions, Memory and Situational Awareness

This entry is part 2 of 7 in the series Tracking Systems

“Unless it produces action, information is overhead.” –Thomas Petzinger First, a caveat: vendors of HISs (hospital information systems) and EDISs (emergency department information systems) insist that a tracking system is just one component of an integrated system. They point out that there are interactions between a tracking system and CPOE (computer-based practitioner order entry) systems, […]

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History, How Bad Design Kills, Posture and Metaphors

This entry is part 1 of 7 in the series Tracking Systems

The following historical account is based on personal experience as a child being taken to ERs in the 1950s, as an observer in ERs in the 1960s, an EMT and then street medic training in ERs in the 1970s, and then as an emergency physician since the 1980s. Some names may have been changed or […]

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