Should doctors use their judgment? How a system dynamics model elicited knowledge in neonatal care services

Reda Lebcir and Rifat Atun

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2020, vol. 71, issue 7, 1113-1123

Abstract: Neonatal services, which provide care to babies born with medical complications, are under financial pressures in the United Kingdom (UK). The services are heavily regulated affecting efficiency. One possible solution is to reduce the length of stay (LoS) of babies and allow a degree of doctors’ clinical judgment to make decisions. The aim of this paper is to determine the impact of using clinical judgment on neonatal services performance. To achieve this aim, an system dynamics (SD) model was built and validated in a UK neonatal unit. The model was used initially to evaluate the impact of LoS reduction on performance as clinical judgment policies were rejected by participants. The counterintuitive results led to a behavioural change and participants accepted clinical judgment policies which the results indicated should lead to considerable performance improvement. Results’ implications and SD’s modelling ability to foster learning and alter participants’ perceptions and behaviour are discussed.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01605682.2020.1730252 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:tjorxx:v:71:y:2020:i:7:p:1113-1123

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/tjor20

DOI: 10.1080/01605682.2020.1730252

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Operational Research Society is currently edited by Tom Archibald

More articles in Journal of the Operational Research Society from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().