Nurses provide the majority of care to patients in hospitals. Medical error is the 3rd leading cause of death in hospitalized patients in the United States. So what do healthcare professionals, specifically nurses, do to keep patients safe? The Patient Safety Eye-Tracking Research Lab located at the UMass Center at Springfield is one site where patient safety research is being conducted by faculty in the UMass Amherst College of Nursing and their collaborators in the College of Engineering and College of Information Technology and Computer Science.
In the summer of 2016, Dr. Elizabeth Henneman and her team tested a strategy to reduce the impact of interruptions during routine care. In the Fall of 2016, they started conducting a study related to the blood transfusion process, which is the most common procedure performed in hospitals. This research area was inspired by Dr. Don Fisher, an industrial engineer in the UMass College of Engineering who used eye tracking to study texting while driving. Besides driving, eye-tracking technology has been used in aviation and computer science and is now being used to improve safety at the patients’ bedside.