Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationClinical decision support systems (CDSS) and electronic health records (EHR) have been widely adopted but do not support a high level of reasoning for the clinician. As a result, workflow incongruity and provider frustrations lead to more errors in reasoning. Other successful fields such as defense, aviation, and the military have used task complexity as a key factor in decision support system development. Task complexity arises during the interaction of the user and the tasks. Therefore, in this dissertation I have utilized different human factor methods to explore task complexity factors to understand their utility in health information technology system design. The first study addresses the question of generalizing complexity through a clinical complexity model. In this study, we integrated and validated a patient and task complexity model into a clinical complexity model tailored towards healthcare to serve as the initial framework for data analysis in our subsequent studies. The second study addresses the question of the coping strategies of infectious disease (ID) clinicians while dealing with complex decision tasks. The study concluded that clinicians use multiple cognitive strategies that help them to switch between automatic cognitive processes and analytical processes. The third study identified the complexity contributing factors from the transcripts of the observations conducted in the ID domain. The clinical complexity model developed in the first study guided the research for identifying the prominent complexity iv factors to recommend innovative healthcare technology system design. The fourth study, a pilot exploratory study, demonstrated the feasibility of developing a population information display from querying real complex patient information from an actual clinical database as well as identifying the ideal features of population information display. In summary, this dissertation adds to the knowledge about how clinicians adapt their information environment to deal with complexity. First, it contributes by developing a clinical complexity model that integrates both patient and task complexity. Second, it provides specific design recommendations for future innovative health information technology systems. Last, this dissertation also suggests that understanding task complexity in the healthcare team domain may help to better design of interface system

Pharmacist Services

The overall goal of this book is to give the reader a state-of-the-art synopsis of the pharmacist services domain. To accomplish this goal, the authors have addressed the social, psychosocial, political, legal, historic, clinical, and economic factors that are associated with pharmacist services. In this book, you will gain cutting-edge insights from learning about the research of experts throughout the world. The findings have relevance for enhancing pharmacist professionalism, pharmacist practice, and the progression of pharmacist services in the future