Hospital Handoff

While a trip to the hospital may never be ideal, making admission processes safe and efficient can give patients peace of mind. The Healthcare Logistics and Patient Flow: Observation and Analysis Creative Inquiry project, led by Dr. Kevin Taaffe in the Department of Industrial Engineering, seeks to help physicians and patients alike with issues the healthcare field faces, specifically in stress and patient management. The current focus is on studying patterns that occur when physicians hand off patients between shifts.

They work to respond to needs in the hospital system identified by the physicians they collaborate with from the emergency department of the hospital. The team is focused on two projects this year. The first project analyzes data on hospital admission and wait times in the emergency room to see where conflict arises during a patient’s admission process. The team looks for patterns between staff productivity and wait times using the data provided by the hospital. Factors such as severity of a patient’s condition are taken into account as they look for correlations in the data.

The second project measures physical manifestations of stress, such as heart rate variability and perspiration. The students use Empatica watches, which collect real-time data, while health professionals work. The data is used to visualize reactions to shift changes to determine whether that causes additional stressors for medical professionals.

The Creative Inquiry students not only get applicable experience in the industrial engineering field but get to understand the many issues that healthcare workers face and see how their research impacts physicians’ lives. They become immersed in the projects and can understand the language and systems they may use if they enter the healthcare industry. “It gives me a hands-on experience, to see this side of the field, and if I like it or not to help me decide what kind of future I want,” Rahul Patel, a junior industrial engineering major, said. All of the students in the Creative Inquiry expressed interest in some area of the healthcare industry and said this experience helped them narrow down their career paths.

The team will continue their research with the collaborating hospitals and they hope to publish their findings. While their work may never completely remove a patient’s fear from a hospital trip, taking steps to improve processes allows patients to focus on getting better and keeps physicians focused on patient health.