Title
Social network analyses of patient-healthcare worker interactions: implications for disease transmission.
Abstract
Patients and healthcare workers (HCW) in healthcare settings represent a unique social network in which the risk of transmission of an infection is considered to be higher for both HCW and patients. Using data from existing clinical informatics resources, we constructed social networks of patient-HCW interactions in the emergency department of a tertiary care pediatric hospital. The structural properties of these networks were analyzed and compared to other well known networks. Patient-HCW networks do not demonstrate the classical power-law distribution of scale-free networks, thus indicating that they are different from social networks of individuals in a community. The clustering coefficient is larger as compared to a random network, indicating small world properties. The eigenvector centrality, used to identify the most important nodes, reveals HCW to be more connected than patients. These properties imply differences that must be taken into account when analyzing patient-HCW networks and planning interventions and mitigation strategies to prevent the spread of infectious diseases in healthcare settings.
Year
Venue
Field
2009
AMIA
Health care,Psychological intervention,Disease,Social network,Interpersonal relationship,Medical emergency,Social support,Clustering coefficient,Health informatics,Medicine
DocType
Volume
ISSN
Conference
2009
1942-597X
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
3
0.45
0
Authors
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Adi Gundlapalli14714.74
Xiulian Ma230.45
Jose Benuzillo392.00
Warren Pettey471.91
Richard Greenberg530.45
Joseph Hales630.45
Molly Leecaster750.81
Matthew H. Samore814326.07