JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The user requirements for in-hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) support applications (apps) is understudied. To study usability, functionality, and design based on user requirements, we applied a mixed-methods research design using interviews, observations, and a Kano questionnaire to survey perspectives of both physicians and nurses.

Objective:

This study aims to identify what an in-hospital CPR support app should include to meet the requirements and expectations of healthcare professionals by evaluating the “CprPrototype” app.

Methods:

We used a mixed-methods research design. The qualitative methods consist of semi-structured interviews and observations from an advanced life support (ALS) course; both provided input to the subsequent questionnaire development. The quantitative method is a questionnaire based on the Kano model classifying user requirements as “Must-be,” “One-dimensional” (attributes causing satisfaction when present and dissatisfaction when absent), “Attractive,” “Indifferent,” and “Reverse” (attributes causing dissatisfaction when present and satisfaction when absent). The questionnaire was supplemented with comment fields. All respondents were physicians and nurses providing ALS at hospitals in the Central Denmark Region.

Results:

In total, 83 responded to the questionnaire, 15 physicians and nurses were observed during ALS training, and five physicians were interviewed. Based on the Kano questionnaire, 53% of requirements were classified as “Indifferent,” 29% as “Attractive,” and 18% as “One-dimensional.” The comments revealed seven different categories of user requirements with noticeable differences between physicians and nurses: “Technological challenges,” “keep track of time,” “documentation/history,” “disturbing element,” “improvement areas: functions,” “improvement areas: design,” and “better guidance.”

Conclusions:

The study provides recommendations to developers on the user requirements that need to be addressed when developing CPR support apps. Three features (“One-dimensional” attributes) must be incorporated in an in-hospital CPR support app: “Reminder of rhythm check,” “Reminder of resuscitation drugs,” and “Differentiate between adults and children.” Five additional features (“Attractive” attributes) result in higher user satisfaction: “All functions on one side,” “access to the patient journal in the app,” “automatic time recording when cardiac arrest is called,” “sound to guide the chest compression rate (metronome),” and “send CPR history to the DANARREST database.”