Planning behavior and its functional role in interactions with complex systems

This paper reports on a field study of the behavior of anesthesiologists as expert practitioners in managing a class of complex systems: patients under general anesthesia and surgery. The anesthesiologists studied were found to make extensive use of preparatory strategies, which provided them with many types of resources, including potential problems to be dealt with, materials needed, contingency response plans, desired goals, and the errors that are likely to be committed, The process of preparing these resources usually started with the compilation and review of a set of points for consideration (PFCs). A conceptual model of human planning is proposed which challenges traditional views on problem solving and planning, The model accounts for not only the specific results obtained in this field study, but also for the functional role of planning behavior during interactions with dynamic and complex systems in general, an important aspect of problem solving which has direct implications for the design of human-machine interfaces and cognitive support systems.