Effects of ‘blue-regulated’ full spectrum LED lighting in clinician wellness and performance, and patient safety

Octavio L. Perez, Christopher Strother, Richard Vincent, Barbara Rabin, Harold Kaplan

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Lighting has been recognized in the fields of human factors, ergonomics, and systems engineering, as an environmental factor that can affect wellness and performance, and the occurrence of medical error. Short wavelength (‘blue’) light is known to influence ‘non-visual’ effects of light in humans. These effects, that go beyond the pure ‘visual’ function, can affect human wellness and performance, as has been reported in previous scientific research. The aim and novelty of this research is to study the potentially beneficial ‘non-visual’ effects of lighting in the clinical environment to advance patient safety, and improve clinician wellness and performance. The hypothesis of this study was that clinician wellness and performance in the execution of clinical procedures in the emergency department (ED) could be improved through controlled, indirect, ‘blue’-regulated, full visible spectrum, tunable, solid state, ‘white’ lighting. To conduct our inquiry, we performed a crossover study with current ED clinicians that executed clinical procedures in a high-fidelity, simulated ED setting, under two different lighting conditions. We used the existing fluorescent lighting as the control condition. To provide the appropriate experimental lighting condition, we developed a novel multichannel lighting system for precise control and assessment of light delivery conditions, with specific emphasis in the short wavelength (blue light) spectral area. The results of this study suggest that it is possible that indirect, ‘blue-enriched’, full visible spectrum, ‘white’ lighting, might reduce clinician sleepiness and workload perceptions, might reduce the execution time for clinical procedures, and the occurrence of medical error, while improving clinician wellness. Future work would expand the scope of our study to advance patient safety in clinical scenarios where prevalence of adverse events has been observed, such as improvement in clinician cognitive recovery from medical error, hand-offs, and teamwork conditions. This study can also be translated to other fields of applications such as 24/7 control centers.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2018) - Volume I
Subtitle of host publicationHealthcare Ergonomics
EditorsSebastiano Bagnara, Yushi Fujita, Riccardo Tartaglia, Sara Albolino, Thomas Alexander
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages667-682
Number of pages16
ISBN (Print)9783319960975
DOIs
StatePublished - 2019
Event20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association, IEA 2018 - Florence, Italy
Duration: 26 Aug 201830 Aug 2018

Publication series

NameAdvances in Intelligent Systems and Computing
Volume818
ISSN (Print)2194-5357

Conference

Conference20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association, IEA 2018
Country/TerritoryItaly
CityFlorence
Period26/08/1830/08/18

Keywords

  • Blue-enriched lighting
  • Emergency department
  • Healthcare ergonomics
  • Human factors
  • Patient safety
  • Randomized control trial
  • Visual ergonomics
  • ipRGC

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