Safety=Design V1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Safety = Design: Driving safety and signposting risk by adapting the philosophy of traffic icons to guide behaviour of healthcare staff and patients and their carers at the bedside.
IRAS ID
155471
Contact name
Christian P Subbe
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Liverpool
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 3 months, 2 days
Research summary
Can more visual prompts improve compliance with recommended management of patients at risk of deterioration on general hospital wards?
Safety=Design will aim to simplify hospital documentation on general wards by developing a set of intuitive icons for common risks with patients, carers, healthcare professionals and world leading experts in safety design. The resulting toolkit will contain signposting for severe infections, acute kidney injury, high-risk drugs and other common clinical risks. As a sub-study we would like to investigate whether short explanations for patients at risk of Acute Kidney Injury (Action Cards/Patient Diaries) could lead to more appropriate fluid monitoring.The icons will be introduced into a number of locations in the clinical space, at the bedside and into notes and refined through plan-do-study-act cycles by a clinical collaborative of eight wards at four hospitals in Greater London and Wales. The effect of using icons to signpost risk will be measured through local audit with run-charts and T-charts by quantifying compliance with standard operating procedures (for health care staff) and action cards (for patients and their carers) in repeated small sample testing.
Design will be guided by feedback from clinical teams during a 12 months period and will be specific to local requirements wherever needed.
The resulting set of icons and tools will be made available to clinicians throughout the UK for further testing and refinement.
REC name
Wales REC 5
REC reference
15/WA/0172
Date of REC Opinion
27 May 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion