Understanding situation awareness in nursing work: a hybrid concept analysis

Eighty percent of medical error are attributed to human factors. Human factors experts suggest the least explored factor in patient errors is attention, specifically, situation awareness. The purpose of this article was to analyze the concept of situation awareness using a hybrid concept analysis. T...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAdvances in nursing science Vol. 35; no. 1; p. 77
Main Authors Sitterding, Mary Cathryn, Broome, Marion E, Everett, Linda Q, Ebright, Patricia
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.01.2012
Subjects
Attention
Awareness
Humans
Interviews as Topic
Medical Errors
Nurses - psychology
Nursing Care - psychology
Nursing Research
Task Performance and Analysis
Workload
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Summary:Eighty percent of medical error are attributed to human factors. Human factors experts suggest the least explored factor in patient errors is attention, specifically, situation awareness. The purpose of this article was to analyze the concept of situation awareness using a hybrid concept analysis. The experience of situation awareness among nurses was elicited during the fieldwork phase through semistructured interviews. Content and relational analyses yielded 9 themes: perception, comprehension, projection, knowledge and expertise, cognitive overload, interruption management, task management, instantaneous learning, and cognitive stacking. A conceptual definition of situation awareness emerged along with recommendations for application in nursing.
ISSN:1550-5014
DOI:10.1097/ANS.0b013e3182450158