Social Network Analysis of Intensive Care Unit Health Care Professionals Measured by Wearable Sociometric Badges: Longitudinal Observational Study.

Eiji Kawamoto,Noriko Mizutani,Motomu Shimaoka,Ryo Esumi,Hiroshi Imai,Mami Ito,Asami Ito-Masui,Tomoyo Hayashi

doi:10.2196/23184

Eiji Kawamoto, Noriko Mizutani + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.2196/23184

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Abstract

BackgroundUse of wearable sensor technology for studying human teamwork behavior is expected to generate a better understanding of the interprofessional interactions between health care professionals.ObjectiveWe used wearable sociometric sensor badges to study how intensive care unit (ICU) health care professionals interact and are socially connected.MethodsWe studied the face-to-face interaction data of 76 healthcare professionals in the ICU at Mie University Hospital collected over 4 weeks via wearable sensors.ResultsWe detail the spatiotemporal distributions of staff members’ inter- and intraprofessional active face-to-face interactions, thereby generating a comprehensive visualization of who met whom, when, where, and for how long in the ICU. Social network analysis of these active interactions, concomitant with centrality measurements, revealed that nurses constitute the core members of the network, while doctors remain in the periphery.ConclusionsOur social network analysis using the comprehensive ICU interaction data obtained by wearable sensors has revealed the leading roles played by nurses within the professional communication network.

Highlights

Knowing how people interact in the workplace is an important basis for understanding how effective collaborative behavior develops
We analyzed a large data set previously collected in our earlier feasibility study that involved 76 intensive care unit (ICU) staff, each of whom worked for 160 hours on average during the 4-week period of data collection, totaling 729,600 minutes of active, person-to-person interaction
Attending physicians actively interacted mostly with nurses, followed by other attending physicians and residents. These data suggested the pivotal roles played by nurses and their interprofessional communication in the ICU

Summary

Introduction

Knowing how people interact in the workplace is an important basis for understanding how effective collaborative behavior develops. Social network analysis can be a potentially powerful tool for systematically assessing the nature of human interactions in the workplace, thereby elucidating the overall structure of organizational behavior. This can be depicted as a sociogram, which visualizes how interactions take place, how people are connected, how relationships are formed, and how information is transferred [1]. Datasets for social network analysis are usually acquired manually via questionnaires, observations, and manual retrieval of electronic medical and administrative records [3,4] These manual data acquisition methods make it difficult to carry out objective and comprehensive/continuous measurements of social network connections among medical staff. Use of wearable sensor technology for studying human teamwork behavior is expected to generate a better understanding of the interprofessional interactions between health care professionals

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Conclusion