Information Delivery from Healthcare Providers to Patients in Emergency Department: Opportunities for Patient-Centric Technology Design

I present an observational study conducted to understand the phenomenon of information delivery to patients from healthcare providers in an Emergency Department (ED). My observations reveal different phases of a patient's ED care process, which I term as “milestones”. I report the composition of these care milestones in terms of information given to patients and the care team members who deliver information. Analysis of contextualized information delivery events across these milestones revealed three factors affecting information delivery and patients’ perception of information delivery. These factors are: temporalities in a patient's care process, invisibility of ED work to patients and a patient’s expectation and health literacy. My study shows how these factors affect information availability, and the time and content of information delivered to patients. The findings reflect on when and what information is appropriate to be delivered to patients, and how to design patient-centric technologies for information delivery to be appropriate with regards to the time, content and format of information delivery