The Distributed Use of Electronic Emergency-Department Whiteboards

At emergency departments (EDs), electronic whiteboards are introduced to provide a better overview and to support clinicians in spending more time with patients. Often, the main difference between electronic and dry-erase whiteboards is that electronic whiteboards provide distributed access to whiteboard information. We investigate the distributed use of whiteboards at one ED by analyzing seven months of log data. Distributed use is far most frequent among the secretaries, indicating that whiteboards serve multiple uses. The physicians and nurses make little distributed use of the whiteboard and when they do it is to prepare for seeing and to document having seen a patient, rather than in patient rooms with the patients. Important reasons for the limited distributed use among physicians and nurses appear to be a frequent need and practice of visiting the physical information hub of the ED. The information hub features a permanent wall-mounted display of the electronic whiteboard and this display, rather than distributed access, is preferred by physicians and nurses.