Cognitive Aids to Support Health Professionals

Providing healthcare professionals with cognitive aids, whether a simple checklist or an information system, improves patient care and reduces information-processing constraints for caregivers. However, to achieve these objectives, these aids must be adaptable and ergonomic.

Cognitive Aids to Support Healthcare Professionals offers an unprecedented presentation of the different forms of cognitive aids, as well as an analysis of these aids as gateways for channelling resources to support mental activity and a general framework to simply model cognitive aids as Turing machines.

Throughout this book, healthcare professionals, executives, hospital managers, healthcare engineers, ergonomists and trainers will find ergonomic advice on the choice or design of cognitive aids, and also, more generally, on the roles that cognitive aids play in activities.

Foreword ix
Morgan JAFFRELOT

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction xv

Part 1. Cognitive Aid as a Gateway 1

Chapter 1. Defining a Cognitive Aid 5

Chapter 2. Cognitive Aid: A Gateway Between the Individual and their Environment 27

Chapter 3. Routing Analytical Thinking to Support Intuition 47

Chapter 4. Routing Intuitive Thinking to Support Analysis 73

Chapter 5. Routing Prescribed Tasks to Support the Actual Activity 93

Part 2. Cognitive Aid as a Turing Machine 123

Chapter 6. Analyzing the Work Domain to Design a Tape 133

Chapter 7. Task Analysis for Designing a Network of States 157

Conclusion 183

References 189

Index 203

Thierry Morineau is a professor of Cognitive Psychology and Ergonomics at the LP3C laboratory of the Université Bretagne Sud, France. His research focuses on caregivers' activities in real or simulated environments, with a view to designing cognitive aids.