Delphi Method to Achieve Clinical Consensus for a BPMN Representation of the Central Venous Access Placement for...

Proper teaching of the technical skills necessary to perform a medical procedure begins with its breakdown into its constituent steps. Currently available methodologies require substantial resources and their results may be biased. Therefore, it is difficult to generate the necessary breakdown capable of supporting a procedural curriculum. The aim of our work was to breakdown the steps required for ultrasound guided Central Venous Catheter (CVC) placement and represent this procedure graphically using the standard BPMN notation.

We performed the first breakdown based on the activities defined in validated evaluation checklists, which were then graphically represented in BPMN. In order to establish clinical consensus, we used the Delphi method by conducting an online survey in which experts were asked to score the suitability of the proposed activities and eventually propose new activities.

Surveys were answered by 13 experts from three medical specialties and eight different institutions in two rounds. The final model included 28 activities proposed in the initial model and four new activities proposed by the experts; seven activities from the initial model were excluded.

The proposed methodology proved to be simple and effective, generating a graphic representation to represent activities, decision points, and alternative paths. This approach is complementary to more classical representations for the development of a solid knowledge base that allows the standardization of medical procedures for teaching purposes.