Using knowledge in the world to improve patient safety: Designing affordances in health care equipment to specify a sequential “checklist”

Use of current health care equipment for medical procedures (e.g., central line insertions and central line care) is primarily dependent on the cognition of the health care worker. That is, the present design of equipment (typically numerous, separately packaged individual items) provides minimal information about the optimal order of procedure steps and no defenses against human error, such as omitting steps in procedure. In this article, we propose patient safety may be improved by redesigning equipment to integrate a “checklist” using sequencing, color coding, and visual icons. We hypothesize this reduces cognitive demand by off‐loading knowledge into the world, creating affordances that provide guidance reducing the likelihood of errors and promoting adherence to best practices.