EHR Pastel Madness: Cognitive Overload in Critical Care

It's hard to find public postings that show the crazy and dangerous complexity of EHR interfaces, but I found a presentation at http://www.uiowa.edu/~medtest2/picis/vo_picis.pdf (PDF slide presentation) that demonstrates ths problem well.

These are from a 2006 training presentation on an EHR for Critical Care , where doctors and nurses really don't have the time to wade through complexity like this.   

I can honestly and in fact, with great vigor, opine I would not have wanted to use a tool like this when I was working in intensive care units.  And I'm a Medical Informatics specialist x 21 years...


EHRs have not changed much; in fact with the higher commodity (cheap) screen resolutions available in 2013 compared to 2006, the problem is worse.

Some sample screens:

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And there's more where these came from at the link above.

Insane, in my view, to subject busy, stressed out clinicians to a pastel nightmare like this. 

(And that's assuming the application doesn't lose or corrupt data.)

This is not to single out this particular seller.  Other EHR sellers' products are similarly visually and operationally complex.

But, if you, the reader, like these and think, the more that can be packed in the merrier, bring it on, that's fine with me.  It's your life and limb.

Actually, not - because my life and limb are at risk, too.

See the entire presentation for more.

-- SS