Table 3.

Challenges in the frequent task categories by levels of situation awareness

Task	Missing information
Perception challenges
Communication	Current contact information of the patient's relatives Understanding requests from patients Location of communication partner (the exact location of nurses was hard to identify or the location of a needed physician was not known)
Medication management	Ordered infusion rate and time Medication administration protocol Delivery status of ordered medication in medication storage room Value of last blood sugar measurement Due time of scheduled medication orders (login and multiple clicks required) Remaining time of currently infusing medication (medication labels and intravenous pump font size too small to read from doorway)
Patient awareness	Waveform label (yellow and green were hard to discriminate) Alarming value on monitor (hard to discriminate due to blue background) Results of recently drawn lab values, for example, blood gas (only respiratory therapists were informed about recent critical blood gas results) Vital sign values (font too small to read from doorway)
Comprehension challenges
Communication	Awareness of change in patient status by other involved clinicians Recently changed alarm and device settings by other clinicians Required values for charting (nurse memorized vitals to chart them at the EMR outside of the patient's room and sometimes forgot the numbers)
Medication management	Changes in current medication orders Purpose of current medication regime Was unsigned medication administered by previous shift? In-line compatibility of new and currently administered medication Specific administration instructions for new medication Maximum intravenous infusion rate (catch up with delayed drug delivery)
Patient awareness	Assessment needs for patients with rare illnesses A device is alarming, but not sure how severe the problem is Patient's current mental and physical state Condition of patient and alarms while at another location Patient development and trend over the last hours
Projection challenges
Communication	Nurse wants to talk to a physician or other who is currently busy, and does not know when the communication partner will be available Nurse is explaining the plan of care to patient's family and is not sure of the current care goals
Medication management	Risk of possible adverse effects due to currently administered medication Expected trajectory of impact of medication treatment
Patient awareness	Future prognosis of patient

EMR, electronic medical record.