Assessing Risk in Healthcare Collaborative Settings

This chapter describes a case study addressing risk assessment in a hospital unit. The objective of the case study was to analyse the impact on collaborative work and work flow after the unit changed its design and installations, and the consequences for risk management. The Software-Hardware-Environment-Liveware-Liveware (SHELL) model, a conceptual framework for understanding the interaction between human factors (liveware), computers (software and hardware) and the environment, was used in this study. The outcomes show that the SHELL model is adequate for analyzing the complex issues raised in healthcare collaborative settings. The SHELL analysis highlighted how the relationships among doctors, nurses and assistants - expressed according to the software, hardware, environment and liveware elements - evolved in the new work setting, characterized by new working rooms, glass walls and automatic doors. This analysis shows that even small changes, such as changing the way that computers are used in the work environment, may have a significant impact in a collaborative work setting.