Background: Anesthesia departments and intensive care units represent two advanced, high-tech, and complex care environments. Health care in those environments involves different types of technology to provide safe, high-quality care. Smart glasses have previously been used in different health care settings and have been suggested to assist health care professionals in numerous areas. However, smart glasses in the complex contexts of anesthesia care and intensive care are new and innovative. An overview of existing research related to these contexts is needed before implementing smart glasses into complex care environments. Objective: The aim of this study was to highlight potential benefits and limitations with health care professionals' use of smart glasses in situations occurring in complex care environments. Methods: A scoping review with six steps was conducted to fulfill the objective. Database searches were conducted in PubMed and Scopus; original articles about health care professionals’ use of smart glasses in complex care environments and/or situations occurring in those environments were included. The searches yielded a total of 20 articles that were included in the review. Results: Three categories were created during the qualitative content analysis: (1) smart glasses as a versatile tool that offers opportunities and challenges, (2) smart glasses entail positive and negative impacts on health care professionals, and (3) smart glasses' quality of use provides facilities and leaves room for improvement. Smart glasses were found to be both a helpful tool and a hindrance in caring situations that might occur in complex care environments. This review provides an increased understanding about different situations where smart glasses might be used by health care professionals in clinical practice in anesthesia care and intensive care; however, research about smart glasses in clinical complex care environments is limited. Conclusions: Thoughtful implementation and improved hardware are needed to meet health care professionals’ needs. New technology brings challenges; more research is required to elucidate how smart glasses affect patient safety, health care professionals, and quality of care in complex care environments. ©Charlotte Romare, Lisa Skär.

Objective: The aim of this study was to describe healthcare professionals' views of smart glasses before their implementation in an intensive care unit, both regarding quality of use of the glasses and to identify possible intensive care situations where the glasses could be used to increase patient safety. Methods: Data were generated through focus group interviews and analysed using thematic content analysis. Findings: The findings describe participants' views of smart glasses divided into three categories; Smart glasses to facilitate work at intensive care unit; Quality of use and Utilisation. Participants assumed smart glasses to cause both effect and affect in intensive care. Participants' concern for patients arose recurrently and through their concern intention to work to promote patient safety. Conclusion: Smart glasses are suggested as a complement to existing monitoring and routines and cannot replace human presence in intensive care. © 2017 The Authors.

Purpose: Smart glasses are a kind of wearable technology that gives users sustained, hands-free access to data and can transmit and receive information wirelessly. Earlier studies have suggested that smart glasses have the potential to improve patient safety in anesthesia care. Research regarding health care professionals' views of the potential use of smart glasses in anesthesia care is limited. The purpose of this study was to describe anesthesia health care professionals' views of smart glasses before clinical use. Design: A qualitative descriptive study. Methods: Data were collected from focus group interviews and analyzed using thematic content analysis. Findings: Three categories of participants' views of smart glasses were created during the analysis: views of integrating smart glasses in clinical setting; views of customized functionality of smart glasses; and views of being a user of smart glasses. One theme, striving for situational control, was identified in the analysis. Conclusions: Smart glasses were seen as a tool that can impact and improve access to patient-related information, and aid health care professionals in their struggle to gain situational control during anesthesia care. These are factors related to increased patient safety. (c) 2020 American Society of PeriAnesthesia Nurses. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Objective: The aim of this study was to describe burden of care related to monitoring patient vital signs of intensive care unit patients in a Swedish hospital. Setting: Data collected by “The Swedish Intensive Care Registry” from one general category II intensive care unit in a Swedish hospital was included in this study. Data from year 2014 to 2020 was analysed comprising a total of 3617 intensive care episodes and 29,165 work shifts. Research methodology: This is a retrospective database study. Descriptive statistics gave an overview of the dataset. To test for differences between variables related to burden of care for “Documentation of monitoring” Mann Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis test was performed using STATA. Results: “Documentation of monitoring” was reported to generate a prominent burden of care during intensive care. Nearly all patients had continuous monitoring. Comparison for burden of care related to “Documentation of monitoring” for sexes generated no statistically significant difference. Comparison for burden of care related to “Documentation of monitoring” among age groups, diagnose groups and time of day generated statistically significant differences. Conclusion: Monitoring patient vital signs was clearly present during intensive care, hence impacting intensive care nurses’ clinical practice. Further research is endorsed to improve and facilitate monitoring to keep improving patient safety. © 2022 The Authors

Purpose To describe nurse anesthetists’ experiences using smart glasses to monitor patients’ vital signs during anesthesia care. Methods Data was collected through individual semi-structured interviews with seven nurse anesthetists who had used smart glasses, with a customized application for monitoring vital signs, during clinical anesthesia care. Data was analyzed using thematic content analysis. Results An overarching theme became evident during analysis; Facing and embracing responsibility. Being a nurse anesthetist entails a great responsibility, and the participants demonstrated that they shouldered this responsibility with pride. The theme was divided in two sub-themes. The first of these, A new way of working, comprised the categories Adoption and Utility. This involved incorporating smart glasses into existing routines in order to provide safe anesthesia care. The second sub-theme, Encountering side effects, consisted of the categories Obstacles and Personal affect. This sub-theme concerned the possibility to use smart glasses as intended, as well as the affect on nurse anesthetists as users. Conclusion Smart glasses improved access to vital signs and enabled continuous monitoring regardless of location. Continued development and improvement, both in terms of the application software and the hardware, are necessary for smart glasses to meet nurse anesthetists’ needs in clinical practice. Copyright: © 2021 Romare et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.