Design students at ÎçÒ¹¸£Àû have helped develop a world-first guide to help doctors and nurses in emergency departments better understand mechanical heart devices.
The ÎçÒ¹¸£Àû Bachelor of Design undergraduates teamed up in their final year to design a one-page quick user guide for a ventricular assist device (VAD) used for patients with advanced heart failure and awaiting transplants.
Professor supervised the one-off project alongside . Their aim was to support clinicians with key points about the complex devices in the minutes after a patient arrives at their emergency department.
“Dealing with these devices can be a matter of life and death, where removing a battery or pressing the wrong button can have dire consequences for patients,” Professor Wrigley said.
Some doctors and nurses in emergency departments, particularly those outside of big cities, may not have ever seen a VAD before, she said.
But in a high-stakes emergency medicine scenario, they also don’t have the time to wade through a complex technical manual.
“They need a clear, concise and high-impact guide drawing on the best design principles to help them understand these complex devices in a matter of seconds,” Professor Wrigley said.
She said the idea for the guide came from working with the team at The Alfred’s Emergency and Trauma Centre in Melbourne, which is also home to Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia’s transplant programs, and backed up by clinical experience from around the world.
Mr Fitzpatrick, a seasoned senior industrial designer now working for ÎçÒ¹¸£Àû, said students also planned to develop a set of communication design principles to guide future critical communications for mechanical circulatory support (MCS) devices.
To that end they undertook a sweeping review of all MCS related literature and emergency protocols, then distilled the key tasks clinicians needed to know to handle a patient with a VAD in need of life-saving care.
These include assessing the patient’s pulse, managing battery replacements and understanding how to interact with the controller.
“If you’re working in the emergency department and the VAD is beeping, clear, concise information is key. You need a guide to show you what the device is telling you and what to do, with nothing else getting in the way,” Mr Fitzpatrick said.
The final design the students helped contribute to, took the form of a small poster able to be miniaturised, is now off for assessment and testing at The Alfred.
It is hoped the design principles the students developed will be able to be used to help design guides for more advanced types of cardiac support devices as they hit the market.
“Hopefully we can get the guide into hospitals around the world and help improve the care of patients with these devices,” Mr Fitzpatrick said.
“In life or death situations good design goes a long way.”
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