Abstract
•Infection prevention measures can create delays in providing timely patient care.•Systems thinking can be used to analyze infectious disease simulation scenarios.•Interconnections and relationships among safety issues can be identified.•Impacts can be traced to the interplay of environmental and human factors.
Simulation scenarios can be used to identify staff and patient safety issues in healthcare services.
A systems thinking approach was used to analyze qualitative data from five simulation reports and five interviews with facilitators and participants in a hospital setting.
Infection prevention measures created delays in providing timely patient care due to altered roles for staff and constraints imposed by hospital equipment and physical structure.
Systems thinking can be used to analyze the outcomes of simulation scenarios and may help healthcare professionals better understand and work with the affordances and constraints of their healthcare service.