Technical developments tend to grab the headlines in health care. Predictive analytics, telemedicine, electronic health records — technology is rightly seen as a transformative force in health delivery.
How Design Thinking Is Improving Patient-Caregiver Conversations
It’s natural for patients to be afraid of surgery — but recent research found that there are actually four different types of patient reactions. In this piece, the authors describe how a team from Rotterdam Eye Hospital leveraged design-thinking to better understand how different patients felt about their upcoming eye surgeries, as well as what doctors and staff could do to support them. This analysis helped the team to develop a more effective training program, which achieved significant increases in both staff and patient satisfaction levels. Ultimately, the authors argue that while advances in medical technologies are of course vital, there is still an important role for human understanding and personal connection when it comes to improving the health care experience.