Service Design Improving Healthcare - NHS Scotland

For effective healthcare, clear communication is key

Service Design, Co-Design Research, Strategy: Project Coordination, Qualitative Research, Ethnographic Research, Shadowing, User Interviews, Personas, Journey Mapping, Co-design Workshops with Medical Professionals and Patients

Overview

Defining the Problem

This project aimed to enhance the endoscopy experience for patients and staff at the Endoscopy Units of NHS Lothian, located at the Western General Hospital and Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

The time around Endoscopy can be stressful and unpleasant. Preparing from home, in diet and medication, for up to one week prior to the procedure, patients are often confused and under-confident in their responsibilities. Ensuring patients are starting off on the right foot is therefore important.

By understanding the experiences of the patient, we employed service design methods, in tandem with graphic design, and a deep understanding of the information being communicated, to re-imagine how patients receive information.

In the first stage of the project all my team and I were given by the NHS Lothian were the numbers : sometimes as many as 50% a day of all cancer patients scheduled for a colonoscopy would not show up for their long-anticipated appointments. Those who showed up, were often insufficiently prepared for the procedure. This resulted in a huge waste of NHS’ funds, medical staff's time, as well as elongated waiting times for other patients.

Understanding
the Problem

Ideation

Through ethnographic interviews with patiens and medical staff, shadowing, visiting hospitals and analyzing the information available to patients in print as well as online it became clear:

Patients miss/loose their appointments or come insufficiently prepared as the information available to them was often confusing:

• Patients did not prepare for the procedures well as the information provided wasn't clear enough for them

• Patients did not know where to call to receive advice, clarification or help, which affected their ability to prepare well for their appointments

Having analyzed the research, we decided to create a design specification that would allow us to focus on the most important goals of the project, while at the same time allowing us to continue involving sktakeholders in our process. Design proposal cards were created: each of them would define a desirable quality of the future re-designed NHS service. The cards were used by us -designers as a compass, as well as conversation tools during workshops with medical professionals.

With clear objectives in mind, we then moved on to the ideation phase. How can we create a reource that will not only inform patients and their families, but also empower them?

In order to improve the delivery of the medical service, we decided to look into redesigning the way in which patients receive information about their care. In order to find a new way of commuicating all the necessary information in a clear, comprehensvie, simple and accessible way (no medical jargon!) we had to understand who exactly our patients are.

Most of the patiens were overwhelmed with the amount of information thrown at them, as well as its complexity. A lot of patients relied on a family member to help them manage a demanding regiment of scheduling doctor appointments, anregualr chackups and helping them prepare for their procedures. It turned out that NHS, being a huge state-funded medical service that evolved over the period of the past 70 years did not have a one, streamlined channel of communicating with their patients. Patients who ended up being flooded by irrelevant and confusing information from different department of the hospital were so conused theyd miss their colonoscopy apppointmens.

Providing clear and easy-to-understand information to patients not only made them better-prepared; it also created well-informed patients empowered to better manage their care, taking a load of the medical staff and the NHS thin-stretched resources.

Outcome

The final outcome of this project was a redesigned patient information Appointment Guidebook, as well as instructions for the NHS professionals as well as designers on how to replicate the service in other hospitals. A mockup of an online paltform was also created.

Project Outcomes

Please click on images to learn more about the design outcomes