Human factors
-
Comparative Study
Spearcons for Patient Monitoring: Laboratory Investigation Comparing Earcons and Spearcons.
Objective We compared the effectiveness of single-tone earcons versus spearcons in conveying information about two commonly monitored vital signs: oxygen saturation and heart rate. Background The uninformative nature of many medical alarms-and clinicians' lack of response to alarms-is a widespread problem that can compromise patient safety. Auditory displays, such as earcons and spearcons (speech-based earcons), may help clinicians maintain awareness of patients' well-being and reduce their reliance on alarms. ⋯ Experiment 2 verified the previous findings with male-voice Cantonese spearcons. Conclusion Participants identified vital signs more accurately using spearcons than with the single-tone earcons. Application Spearcons may be useful for patient monitoring in situations in which intermittently presented information is desirable.
-
Objective This study aimed to examine the effects of accumulating nursing work on maximal and rapid strength characteristics in female nurses and compare these effects in day versus night shift workers. Background Nurses exhibit among the highest nonfatal injury rates of all occupations, which may be a consequence of long, cumulative work shift schedules. Fatigue may accumulate across multiple shifts and lead to performance impairments, which in turn may be linked to injury risks. ⋯ Conclusions A compressed nursing work schedule resulted in decreases in strength-based performance abilities, being indicative of performance fatigue. Application Compressed work schedules involving long shifts lead to functional declines in nurse performance capacities that may pose risks for both the nurse and patient quality of care. Fatigue management plans are needed to monitor and regulate increased levels of fatigue.
-
To assess whether identifying (or ignoring) learned alarm sounds interferes with performance on a task involving working memory. ⋯ It is worth considering the importance of alarms in environments requiring high working memory performance and in particular avoiding spoken alarms in such environments.
-
Speech Auditory Alerts Promote Memory for Alerted Events in a Video-Simulated Self-Driving Car Ride.
Auditory displays could be essential to helping drivers maintain situation awareness in autonomous vehicles, but to date, few or no studies have examined the effectiveness of different types of auditory displays for this application scenario. ⋯ Speech auditory displays showed promise as a means of increasing Level 1 situation awareness of routine scenarios during an autonomous vehicle ride with an unrelated secondary task.
-
We investigated the effects of level of agent transparency on operator performance, trust, and workload in a context of human-agent teaming for multirobot management. ⋯ The current results will facilitate the implementation of IAs in military settings and will provide useful data to the design of heterogeneous UxV teams.