Summary
Visual Management (VM) is the use of visual devices to influence behaviour. Visual Management Tools (VMTs) are those used to relay information quickly for shared cognition. Existing healthcare VMT research focuses on user-experiences without comparisons with policies and reports to better situate findings within context. Maternity Services Operations Management (OM) in England is used as a case study.
This study explored and developed a new understanding of how particular maternity escalation VMTs, Early Warning Scores (EWS); Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation (SBAR); and Sepsis tools are working in practice, particularly in the transition from paper-based analogue to electronic devices.
Content
This research improves our understanding of the relationship between escalation VMTs and contemporary maternity healthcare work systems in the transition from paper-analogue to electronic devices, highlighting the significance of VMTs for efficiency (allocation of resources), shared repertoires (shared language), and for providing legitimacy to staff voices in bridging hierarchical and professional boundaries.
VMTs make the invisible properties of a system visible, and in doing so they identify exemplars and areas for attention within the business system. This research has identified that an inherent tension exists in using healthcare VMTs, between management layers of accountability, and creating a manageable clinical workload for staff. The findings open a conversational space about Continuous Quality Improvements (CQI) in maternity healthcare, adding to the VMT research genre by linking user-eudaimonia with healthcare safety, making a practical contribution to HFE within STS systems-theory.
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