Learning Patient Transfers with Technology: A Qualitative Investigation of the Design Space

Abstract

Nurses who care about patients with functional disabilities are frequently required to transfer a patient from one place to another. To prevent nurses from injuring themselves during patient transfers, many government-supported schools in Germany provide programs which teach how to conduct transfers based on the kinaesthetics care conception. However, the program is typically limited to merely three lectures. With the goal of promoting nurses' health behavior, we analyzed current practices in kinaesthetics education and explored how interactive technology can extend those practices. We interviewed nursing-care teachers (N = 5) and students (N = 27), and conducted four contextual inquiries during kinaesthetics course sessions. A qualitative analysis of the data revealed three themes. Based on these, we describe a set of implications to support the learning of kinaesthetics-based transfers by means of technology. We propose the use of the implications as initial design goals for user-centered design processes and exemplify their application by illustrating a concept for a tablet-based learning system.