Hospital Family Connect App
How to create a system of communication between the hospital staff and the family of an elderly patient? How to make it effective without having the nurses and doctors do extra work? How to help patient’s family stay informed about the health status of their loved one, and create environment in which the relative doesn’t have to wait for hours for the opportunity to talk to a doctor for 10 minutes? We set out on a mission to help bridge the gap in communication between hospital staff and elderly patient’s relatives.
Hospital Family Connect
Notification system that helps elderly patient’s family effectively communicate with the hospital staff.
Project Stages
- Research
Qualitative Research
Personas
User Flow
- Designing Low-Fidelity Prototype
Sketching
Wireframing
Low-Fidelity Prototype
- Testing
Lookback Unmoderated Usability Testing
Findings sum up
How will findings affect design decisions?
- High-Fidelity Prototype
Reasons for the chosen design
Transfer design elements throughout the app
Start creating UI library
- Questions & Actions
Questions that need to be answered with further research
Screens that need to be designed based on the findings
Role: UX Researcher, UX Designer of a patient’s family side of the app.
Problem
Photo by Ravi Patel on Unsplash
Imagine, your Grandma, whom you love very much, is in the hospital. You are trying to help her the best you can. You come and visit her, you call the nurses to find out how she’s spent the night. You talk to doctors and explain her what the doctors are saying. You help her to cope with new circumstances, diagnoses and other little details.
But you feel frustrated and not heard, when it comes to communicating to her doctors and nurses. You don’t really see her doctors, you miss them during their morning rounds, and then for some reason they don’t really find the time to come by. So you direct your questions to the nurses, they promise to check with the doctor, hours pass by, you don’t hear an answer, you check in with the nurse, and she promises to ask the doctor. More hours come by, the nurse comes to you with an answer to your question. But it only rises more questions, or leaves your frustrated, since your questions was only answered in part.
Taking into account emotional stress you are under when your loved one is in the hospital, this kind of experience leaves you frustrated and even angry. You try your best to find all the information to help your Grandma make the best decision. You see nurses and doctors working hard to tend to all their patients. The problem is not the lack of professionalism, or experience. The problem is a gap in communication between the hospital staff and the elderly patient’s relatives. We are talking specifically about elderly patients, because often they may have onset dementia, can’t clearly understand what the hospital staff is saying or doing, can’t always use a phone to call or text their loved one. They are adults, they officially can take care of themselves, but in reality they need help and support from their family.
Proposed Solution
We have designed an app, that will help the hospital staff manage patient’s family notifications easily, with the help of the internal software system they already have in place. It will also help them communicate directly with the relatives, even if they are not able to come and talk to them in person.
With the approval of the patient, select family members can receive direct notifications about the patient’s health status, receive updates on his vitals & treatment. It will also have a functionality of requesting a conversation with the attending doctor or nurse.
Our hope is that this app will ease the life of both the patient’s family and the hospital staff.
- Research
For initial research we’ve selected 5 people, who have recently had a parent or a grandparent in the hospital. We have asked them questions about their experience, specifically focusing on the communication between them and the hospital staff.
Research Goals:
Identify the main struggles people face when they communicate with the hospital staff as members of the family
What kind of situation has left them feeling frustrated and angry
What communication strategies are currently in place in the hospitals
Research Outcome
As a result of talking to 5 respondents we found that:
100% of them had difficulties receiving information from the doctors.
They have stated that often they needed to ask their questions multiple times, or wait for an answer for hours.
“I said I wanted to talk to a doctor before making a decision on further treatment of my Grandma. I waited for a doctor for hours, I ended up googling the answer.”
4 out of 5 respondents noted that there were gaps in communication between hospital staff and family that lead to misunderstanding and missed information.
“I only found out about complications in the discharge papers.”
“Information wasn’t passed on from the nurses to the next shift.”
40% of respondents had problems with logistics, because of poor communication.
“I was waiting for her after the procedure, but she was in a different place.”
Another problem, that surfaced during interviews, was that the patient’s family doesn’t always know which nurse is on shift, and which doctor is responsible for what. Creating a simple guide on what hospital staff is responsible for which areas will help reduce unnecessary questions and clarify that information for a patient’s family.
Post-Research Recommendations
- The app should be simple and easy to understand and navigate:
users are under stress, in an unknown environment
users are worried and anxious about the health of their loved one
users may not be tech savvy
- It should have informational/educational section, where all the hospital staff positions can be looked up and identified.
- It should have timely notifications to share with the family the health status of a patient.
- It should have a functionality that enables patient’s family to ask the doctor questions or request an appointment. The doctor can either talk through the app, or he can send on-demand recorded answers. There should also be chat functionality, so it can be used interchangeably with the video messages and live video/audio.
- To improve logistics, there should also be information about where the patient is located, what are the visiting hours, whether or not somebody is currently visiting (it may be important in the times of the pandemic, because of visiting restrictions).
- Automatically update caring team information. So the patient’s family always knows who is the doctor, who is the nurse, the floor technician, and others when applicable.
Personas
We have identified 4 personas that interact with the app.
Patient, John.
“My brain isn’t as efficient as it used to be. I forget simple things, like whether or not I have had breakfast 2 hours ago. What other people are saying and why often doesn’t make sense to me. My daughter has been helping me with everyday things. I trust her. I want her to know what’s going on if I’m in the hospital. I also don’t want to be a burden. I don’t want her to stop her life to take care of me.”
As an elderly patient with the onset of dementia, I want my daughter to be informed about what’s going on with my health, so that she can be here for me when it’s needed.
Patient’s daughter, Melanie.
“I take care of my elderly father, when I can. I come over and help clean and make food. I handle his relationship with doctors, bills, etc. He doesn’t always understand what’s going on. He mostly lives in the past. I love to listen to his stories from childhood.”
As John’s daughter I want to know how he’s doing while in the hospital, so that my dad receives the best possible care.
Nurse, Jenn.
“My workload feels like too much. I’m in the go-go-go mode all shift. Very rarely I have a minute to rest. I feel pressure from my superior, from the doctors, and often from the patient’s family. I often don’t have time to return the calls, or follow up with families.”
As a nurse, I want to be able to communicate with the patient’s family effectively, so all questions & problems are resolved on time.
Doctor, Jeff.
“I am busy helping patients. I hate that the family has to wait sometimes for hours to talk to me. I am often unable to come talk to them right away, unless it’s an emergency, and I’m rushing to help the patient.”
As a doctor, I want to be available for the family to answer their questions, so that decisions on further care are made on time, and so that the family is informed.
User Flow
Based on the research and our idea of how the app might look like, we have created a user flow chart to illustrate user flow.
- Designing Low-Fidelity Prototype
We have focused on designing a dashboard for a Home screen for the app. It has a short and easy to understand summary of most recent vitals, recommendations, prescriptions and such.
The goal of this screen is to inform a patient’s family about how a patient is feeling and reassure them that all measures are being taken. We have also created a menu on the bottom that will allow a family member to send a message directly to the doctor.
Homescreen, with notes and further development
- Testing
We have tested the prototype with the help of the Lookback.io. Users have returned the following frustrations and feedback:
1) 3 out of 5 users could not understand where the homepage was -> Come up with clearer navigation & a set of welcome screens.
2) All of the participants liked to see faces of the Care Team. 2 participants suggested to add short bios as well. -> Add click-through to bios.
3) Chat with a doctor was easy to understand. I would like to add a screen from the doctor’s side. He has the ability to send a video/audio message as well. I want to show it in the prototype.
4) Diagnosis needs a menu, a list of items.
5) One participant mentioned that it would be good to have discharge papers in the app as well. Show how it will be incorporated.
We have summed up our findings in our design for further iteration.
- High Fidelity Prototype
Following the first usability testing we created a high-fidelity prototype. We have chosen to use gray and white color palette, with accents in aqua. Taking into account that the user is in stress, we focused on delivering the information with clarity and no distraction. We have decided to not use conversational tone and full sentences at the homepage. Focusing on data and easy to navigate interface. Everything at your fingertips, and no need to think.
We have also decided to leave only 3 major menu items on the bottom navigation bar: Home, Talk to Doctor and Care Team. We’ve moved Medications into the Homepage body, and we moved Diagnosis on the top right. We have also added Notifications icon in the top right for urgent alerts about the patient’s health status and updates.
High-fidelity prototype. Home screen.
We have also updated the Talk to a Doctor screen. We decided to keep only one button at the top Request a Consult to make it easier for the user to navigate the app functionality. And we have also decided to create an option for the doctor to leave a voice message instead of having to type the answer. Both a doctor and a nurse can reply to answers in this section. Voice messaging functionality is made similar to a voice mail, with a transcription available.
- Questions & Actions
We only had an opportunity to work on a patient’s family side of the app. There has to be more research done from the hospital staff side. In particular, we would need answers to the following questions:
How to make this app usable?
How to integrate it with the internal hospital informational system?
How to make it useful for the doctors and nurses?
How to create it so that it wouldn’t add to the already busy schedules of the hospital staff, to not confuse them, but to make it easier to communicate with the patient’s family?
There has to be extensive testing done in the hospital environment to identify gaps and find solutions that work.
The goal of this app is to make communication between a patient’s family and hospital staff effective. We intended to lower the stress level of the patient and his family by providing information and making it less frustrating, when answers needed.
Chat with me
If you are interested in learning more about my experience, or if you have a collaboration in mind, drop me a line!
camomint@gmail.com
(614) 495-6244