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Standardized Workload Assessment Metric for Pediatric Emergency Departments (SWAMPED): Multicenter Derivation and
Garth Meckler1,2, Jeffrey N Bone2,3, Tania Principi4
1Department of Pediatrics, Pediatric Emergency Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Background:
Physician workload in pediatric emergency departments (PEDs) is associated with patient safety, quality of care, and clinician well-being, but is commonly inferred from proxy measures such as visit volume, acuity, or throughput metrics that incompletely capture the contextual and cognitive demands of clinical care. The Standardized Workload Assessment Metric for Pediatric Emergency Departments (SWAMPED) was developed to quantify workload at the level of discrete clinical tasks. We derived workload estimates and evaluated the reliability, precision, and contextual responsiveness of SWAMPED.
Methods:
We conducted a multicenter cross-sectional study of PED physicians at tertiary children's hospitals within the Pediatric Emergency Research Canada network. Participants independently scored 46 care components using the NASA Task Load Index, a validated multidimensional instrument that measures perceived workload associated with a specific task (in this case a clinical care component) accounting for six domains of effort (mental, physical, time, effort, performance, and frustration). Six extrinsic patient and systems-level modifiers were assessed for their impact on component-level workload. We assessed score distributions, interrater agreement using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC), precision of component estimates, and extrinsic modifiers' effects using mixed-effects models.
Results:
Sixty-two physicians from 11 sites participated. Interrater agreement across care components was good (ICC: 0.69, 95% CI: 0.60-0.78). Mean workload scores varied across care components (range 22.1-99.5) with high precision (95% CI margin of error of 2.5-6.5 points; relative margin 5%-10%). Most components demonstrated increased workload in the presence of extrinsic modifiers, while intrinsic physician characteristics were not associated with significant differences in workload scores.
Conclusions:
SWAMPED generated reliable and precise, task-specific workload estimates and demonstrated sensitivity to clinically relevant contextual modifiers. This approach enables quantitative assessment of physician workload at the task level and provides a foundation for future investigations linking workload to clinical outcomes, clinician performance, and health system planning.
