Situational awareness in the context of clinical practice

Abstract

In the context of clinical practice, situational awareness refers to conscious awareness (knowledge), which is a mental model of a given clinical situation in terms of its elements and the significance of their interrelation. Situational awareness (SA) facilitates clinical reasoning, diagnostic accuracy, and appropriate goal-directed performance, and it enables clinicians to immediately adapt treatment strategies in response to changes in clinical situational actualities and to modify the course of goal-directed activities accordingly. It also helps clinicians prepare future operational plans and procedures based on the projection of situational developments. SA, therefore, is an important prerequisite for safe clinical procedures. The purpose of this narrative review is to highlight certain cognitive and external (environmental) situational factors that influence the development of situational awareness. Understanding the dynamic, adaptive, and complex interactions between these factors may assist clinicians and managers of healthcare systems in developing methods aimed at facilitating the acquisition of accurate clinical situational awareness and, in turn, may bring about a reduction in the incidence of SA, diagnostic, and operational errors.