Nurse calls via personal wireless devices; some challenges and possible design solutions

We have carried out a qualitative case study of the new combined fixed and wireless nurse call system at St. Olav's University Hospital. We have used rapid ethnography and carried out document studies, interviews and observations. The paper offers a detailed description on how the nurse call system is intended to work, as well as some aspects of how it works in practice. Our focus has been a study of the nuanced, contextual decisions taken by the nurses, and how the ICT system may support the nurses (e.g. via awareness), or may raise issues for the nurses (e.g. via unwanted interrupts). The paper concludes with some rather detailed proposals for improvements by considering more closely the role of redundancy of function and redundancy of data.