Table 4.
Key themes emerging from testing of aid 3
| Key themes (aid 3) | Subthemes | Reported impact | Examples | Recommendation to be incorporated into aid 4 |
| Physical characteristics (font size and type, use of colour, contrast) | Colour (good use of) Bright colours to focus attention |
Eye drawn to things that were important in the brightly coloured boxes; helped prioritise actions | "I knew the things in the orange boxes were the priorities…" | Sparing use of red useful to focus attention |
| Colour (poor use of) Too much colour distracting |
An abundance of colour (reverse side) was overwhelming; incorrect dose given; aid discarded | "It wasn’t obvious how to access the dose information from the table until afterwards. The colour was distracting." "Afterwards I realised I had read out the dose for a 10 kg patient and the anaesthetist gave it." |
Use of black and white for maximum contrast and clarity | |
| Use of white space, bold and font size | Uncluttered appearance (front side) helped prioritise steps | "The bolding helped make the priorities clear" | Use of bold to focus attention | |
| Layout | Flowchart (good use of) | Provided a timeline for the management including timing between actions (eg, do this then 5 min later do that) and when to escalate treatment; useful information about end points | "There was a clear pathway to follow." "I knew straight away that I might need to continue this resuscitation for 1 hour, that helped my decision making." |
Flowchart desirable to communicate sequence of steps |
| Flowchart with both left → right and top → bottom streams (poor use of) | Too many streams to flowchart; information missed (eg, need for prolonged resuscitation); actions missed (eg, delay to give epinephrine); priorities unclear to some (eg, prioritised intralipid at expense of continuing ALS in parallel) | "I didn’t get past the middle column once I’d found what I was looking for there. This meant I didn’t notice the bit about prolonged resuscitation." "I neglected the advanced life support management in favour of giving intralipid." |
Single stream desirable | |
| Two sided | Information missed on reverse including dose information; for those who noticed both sides they weren’t clear which was front and which was back | "I didn’t realise the absolute doses were on the back until afterwards so I just guessed the doses based on the front side." | Single-sided desirable Use page numbers if more than one side/page |
|
| Content | Need for calculations (when only front side used) | Incorrect dose given | Provide absolute doses by weight | |
| No need for calculations (when reverse side used) | Correct dose given | "I liked the table with the per kilo doses." | Provide absolute doses by weight | |
| Impractical units | Incorrect dose given | "The front side (which is all I used) only had the infusions in ml/kg/min" | Use practical units that match infusion pump settings |