Re: Patient-centered medicine & user-centered design

Hal,

There is a fair amount of research on patient-centered care, but I'm
guessing that research-to-practice suffers as  much as it does in most
domains and pragmatics interfere in how things REALLY get done. One of the
premier organizations that works in this arena is the Institute for
Healthcare Improvement http://www.ihi.org/ihi. (There are a ton of others.
Google healthcare quality improvement.)

One of the ways that usability, information architecture, and user-centered
design folks can improve patient care is to help health care communications
folks make materials that are easier for patients and their family to
understand and use. For example, I worked on a patient information project
where the materials were hard to understand and weren't originally written
from the perspective of patient and family needs. It was great (and very
meaningful) to make them more useful/valuable/helpful. I adore that kind of
work.

I've thought about writing a book called, "Don't Let Hospitals Kill Your
Parents," based on the notes I kept during truly horrifying hospital
experiences (in multiple hospitals) in the last few years of my parents'
lives. Unfortunately, you have to be your own patient advocate. And doing so
is very hard.

Patti

Contribute to Volume 2 of the Online Learning Idea Book!
http://www.learningpeaks.com/ideabook2_FAQs.pdf 

Patti Shank PhD
Learning Peaks LLC
Instruction and information designers
www.learningpeaks.com

Editor,  The Online Learning Idea Book
Co-author, Essential Articulate Studio '09

-----Original Message-----
From: ACM SIGCHI WWW Human Factors (Open Discussion)
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Hal Shubin
Sent: Monday, January 11, 2010 12:38 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Patient-centered medicine & user-centered design

I was talking with my primary care physician today about how
un-patient-centered my recent hospital stay was. (See below for some
examples.) He mentioned a seminar or class he teaches for residents about
empathy and looking at medical care from the patient's point of view. I'm so
glad he mentioned this because the experience made me want to find a way to
apply what I know to fix the problem.

I'm sure there's not a lot of medical literature about this. Driving away, I
started thinking about what there is in *our* literature, and in our
methodologies that could help him. For example, maybe the idea of personas
would be useful: they could work together to create personas for Sally
SeniorCitizen, Andy Appendicitis, Uncle UnknownProblems and Polly Pregnant,
and refer to them in their discussions.

Some of my consulting work has involved medical software and hardware, and
I've done usability testing with physicians. But this is different. Have you
done anything relevant that I could pass along? Or have any ideas that seem
appropriate? 

thanks				-- hs

A few examples of how un-patient-focused my hospital stay was. 
= I didn't mind having vitals checked every four hours around the clock --
it seems useful, and I wasn't sleeping well anyway.
= Nurses would do something and say they'd be back in (say) 20 minutes to
check on the outcome, but it was much longer than that.
= Someone came in during the night and started asking questions without
identifying himself -- how do I answer without knowing who and what he is? 
= Two teams of doctors wanted to poke, probe and interview me when I was
just too cold and uncomfortable, so I had to ask them to leave. They said
they'd be back soon, but it was the next day. 
= Another doctor wouldn't tell me what I should order when I was moved to a
solid diet, he just vetoed all my suggestions; he said he'd come back later
instead of helping me right then, but he sent a medical student three hours
later. Etc.


- - - - - - - - - -
Hal Shubin  -  Interaction Design, Inc.
617 489 6595  -  www.user.com

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