Ethnographic study of workflows at a clinical call centre
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Ethnographic study of critical care hub workflows around dispatch decisions at a clincal call centre
IRAS ID
316886
Contact name
Matt Roach
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Swansea University
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 7 months, 20 days
Research summary
EMRTS (Emergency Medical Retrieval and Transfer Service) Cymru is a service commissioned by the Emergency Ambulance Services Committee (EASC) of the Welsh NHS to provide pre-hospital critical care via the Wales Air Ambulance service and their own rapid response road vehicles. The service's coordinating function, the EMRTS Critical Care Hub (ECCH), is staffed by clinicians and allocators who face the challenge of reviewing ~2000 emergency calls a day for the fewer than 1% that are suitable for a EMRTS critical care team pre-hospital intervention.
A particular challenge for the ECCH is that selecting cases for review, reviewing those cases, selecting cases for deeper scrutiny, scrutinising those selected cases and then making dispatch decisions are just five tasks carried out in an intensively busy context that itself includes coordination and other information tasks required at the hub. An algorithmic tool to assist any step in the process must be designed to fit unobtrusively into the existing workflows of all staff while being accessible and providing effective, tractable and timely support information. This usability is just as essential to safe and effective use of the tool as its performance in terms of accuracy and reliability.
Determining which points in the process and which designs in terms of representation and interaction are likely to provide effective, safe and feasible support in the users' existing context requires in-depth ethnographic study of the situated workflows.
Participants in this ethnographic study will be ECCH staff. The approach will be to use observation of the ECCH staff at work to explore the nature of their multi-tasking, task-switching, information-seeking, information-sharing, opinion-seeking and decision-making.
REC name
North West - Greater Manchester West Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/NW/0253
Date of REC Opinion
13 Sep 2024
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion