Abstract
The outcome of critical illness depends not only on life threatening pathophysiologic disturbances, but also on several complex "system" dimensions: health care providers' performance, organizational factors, environmental factors, family preferences and the interactions between each component. Systems engineering tools offer a novel approach which can facilitate a "systems understanding" of patientenvironment interactions enabling advances in the science of healthcare delivery. Due to the complexity of operations in critical care medicine, certain assumptions are needed in order to understand system behavior. Patient variation and uncertainties underlying these assumptions present a challenge to investigators wishing to model and improve health care delivery processes. In this chapter we present a systems engineering approach to modeling critical care delivery using sepsis resuscitation as an example condition.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Management Engineering for Effective Healthcare Delivery |
| Subtitle of host publication | Principles and Applications |
| Publisher | IGI Global |
| Pages | 132-147 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781609608729 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2011 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Health Professions