Tedious Versus Taxing: The Nature of Work in a Behavioral Health Context

The goal of this study was to examine the work practices of behavioral health professionals with a view towards designing interactive systems to support their work. We conducted a qualitative workplace study, including in situ observations and semi-structured interviews, in a multidisciplinary clinic treating pediatric feeding disorders. This paper contributes a detailed characterization of clinicians' work practices and conducts a comparative analysis of three types of work: treatment, record management, and preparation work. We found that clinicians have a preference for taxing over tedious work. For example, they experience real-time data collection as more taxing but less tedious than retroactive data entry. Design efforts should balance the tension between addressing the taxing (data collection during meals) versus the tedious (manually entering data into spreadsheets). Although addressing the taxing improves within-routine efficiency, addressing the tedious improves overall morale. Further, we hypothesize that there is a rewarding or unrewarding quality to work that is dictated in part by its social, temporal, and clinical characteristics. We discuss conceptual and design implications for supporting clinical work, and highlight considerations unique to behavioral health.