Medical nursing support pictograms Ashikawa Red Cross Hospital, Hokkaido, Japan, 2008

摘要

Confronted with an increasing number of accidential misshandlings of patients by hospital staff - especially a famous case of malpractice at Yokohama University Hospital in 1999, the Ashikawa Red Cross Hospital understood that it needed to take action.rnAs the principal causes of these accidents could be traced to a lack of staff and the consequential overload of work for those on duty, the hospital came to realize that access to information on the patients' specific conditions and needs was both the problem and the key to a solution. In order to determine how to respond to the particular requirements of each patients' requests - generally not clearly articulated - as well as to memorize the routine treatments for any individual, doctors and nurses had to consult health records filed in complex documents; visitors had to turn to one of the available staff.