Defibrillator Usability Study among Paramedics

A usability test was conducted of two different manual defibrillators regularly used in the prehospital setting by emergency medical personnel. The purpose of the study was to demonstrate that design attention is needed to make manual defibrillators more error resistant and less hazardous to patient safety. Fourteen paramedics performed four tasks in a “laboratory” environment that included a computerized Laerdal SimMan patient simulator. Even without environmental factors and the urgency of actual life-saving situations, more than twenty user interaction problems were found. Ten of the more prominent or consistent problems found are discussed here, and a design solution is proposed for each problem.