The nursing staff in German intensive care units encounters various challenges in their daily work. The strained personnel situation increases the stress experienced. The involved nurses bear a special responsibility for the care of critically ill patients requiring mechanical ventilation. Particularly challenging is the phase of weaning from ventilation, which represents an enormous physical and psychological strain for the affected patients. Moreover, the communicative abilities of this patient group are severely limited; they are mostly unable to express their basic needs. This can lead to a prolonged healing process, inadequate pain management, delirium, and other complications.

Solutions to improve the communication situation of these patients and reduce staff workload are urgently needed. Existing aids and strategies are often perceived as unhelpful by nursing personnel, or they lack knowledge about possible approaches. Assistive technology and related design solutions based on established information and communication technologies that can significantly improve limited communication often require corresponding physical and cognitive capabilities in handling partially complex and inflexible interaction devices.

This dissertation presents the human-centred development process of a novel assistive system to support patient communication in the context of weaning from ventilation. The main components include input via a new type of interaction device tailored to the context’s requirements and the presentation of application content in a newly developed circular menu technique called Compass Menu. The results of two laboratory studies support positive conclusions about the usability and applicability of the system in the context of weaning from ventilation.

Note: the language of the document is German.