Plus Designs (United States)

This article is based on a Learning Lounge educational session that took place on 22nd October 2022, as part of Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) IDWeek™ 2022 held in Washington, D.C., USA. The objectives of the Learning Lounge were to enhance understanding of the principal reasons for patients’ vaccine hesitancy based on key sociocultural, behavioural, and psychological factors; identify the general communication ‘cues’ and specific psychosocial objections that signal a patient’s inclination to vaccine bias; and help healthcare professionals (HCP) learn how to address vaccine hesitancy based on patients’ cognitive and behavioural biases. The knowledge shared in this Learning Lounge can help guide and assist HCPs in recognising and addressing vaccine hesitancy, thereby supporting effective conversations with patients and/or their caregivers, and drive more personalised solutions to improve acceptance of vaccinations. The Learning Lounge was hosted by Christopher Graves, Founder and President of the Ogilvy Centre for Behavioral Science, New York, New York, USA., who is an expert on vaccine hesitancy and guiding HCPs on recognising and addressing this phenomenon. Graves was joined by Wendy Wright, Partners in Healthcare Education, LLC, Bedford, New Hampshire, USA, and Todd Wolynn, Kids Plus Pediatrics, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, in a roleplay discussion to highlight cognitive biases that are relevant to vaccine hesitancy, and how these might be addressed in clinical practice.

Introduction Home hemodialysis has not been widely adopted despite superior outcomes relative to conventional in-center hemodialysis. Patients receiving home hemodialysis experience high rates of technique failure owing to machine complexity, training burden, and the inability to master treatments independently. Methods We conducted human factors testing on 15 health care professionals (HCPs) and 15 patients upon release of the defined training program on the Tablo™ Hemodialysis System. Each participant completed one training and one testing session conducted in a simulated clinical environment. Training sessions lasted <3 hours for HCPs and <4 hours for patients, with an hour break between sessions for knowledge decay. During the testing session, we recorded participant behavior and data according to standard performance and safety-based criteria. Findings Of 15 HCPs, 10 were registered nurses and five patient care technicians, with a broad range of dialysis work experience and no limitations other than visual correction. Of 15 patients (average age 48 years), 13 reported no limitations and two reported modest limitations-partial deafness and blindness in one eye, respectively. The average error rate was 4.4 per session for HCPs and 2.9 per session for patients out of a total possible 1,710 opportunities for errors. Despite having received minimal training, neither HCPs nor patients committed safety-related errors that required mitigation; rather, we noted only minor errors and operational difficulties. Discussion The Tablo™ Hemodialysis System is easy to use, and may help to enable self-care and home hemodialysis in settings heretofore associated with high rates of technique failure.

Many minority groups such as the handicapped, blind and hard-of-hearing pose special consumer design problems. One minority which has received minimal attention in the United States is the 22 million lefthanders. These people have either had to adapt or suffer in silence. Problems peculiar to left-handers need not occur as they are correctable through proper design. There is little human factors data, however, to provide guidance for proper design. A task analysis approach, based on force utilization, overcomes many of these obstacles by considering in detail the way tasks are performed. In a systems approach such as this, the required actions and the ways they can be performed by both the righty and lefty are defined. The right- and left-handed modes can be compared and contrasted and recommendations made for (1) no product modification (2) modification to make the product left- and right-hand compatible, or (3) total redesign. While the approach has been applied only to consumer products, it has the potential for extention to more complex situations.