Seattle Children’s is a top pediatric hospital that delivers patient care, advances new discoveries and treatments through pediatric research and serves as the pediatric and adolescent academic medical center for Washington, Alaska, Montana and Idaho.

My team and I worked with the nurses and patient families at Seattle Children’s that were knowledgeable of and involved in the Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) experience during pediatric cancer treatment.

ROLE

User Experience Researcher

TIMELINE

January 2020 - June 2020

TEAM

Kathy Bui - UX Researcher
Ashley Boone - UX Researcher
Melissa Pao - UX Researcher

TOOLS

Atlas.ti
Miro
Figma
Zoom

CORE RESPONSIBILITIES

User Research
User Analysis
UX Design

PROBLEM

The pediatric discharge process can be stressful for patient families who, after months in the hospital, must assume sole responsibility for their child's care.

OUTCOME

My team and I conducted extensive research with BMT nurses and patient families, culminating in deliverables that propose new processes and designs to streamline education for at-home care during a discharge for patient families.
 

UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM SPACE

Learning about current processes...

To better understand the current at-home-care education process, my team and I conducted an artifact walkthrough of discharge-related materials with a transition nurse.

We were able to gather context about the documents and resources nurses used and provided to patient families and answer questions such as:

1

What information is essential to the current discharge process?

2

What resources are currently available for patient families?

3

What user needs trigger the use of these resources?

To extend what we learned from our artifact walkthrough, my team and I conducted 4 subject matter experts interviews to get a more comprehensive overview of the various touchpoints within the end-to-end BMT patient experience.

INTERVIEWING OUR USERS

Following the gathering of information about the BMT patient experience from our artifact walkthrough and SME interviews, we set up interviews with 11 nurses and 3 patient families to gain a deeper understanding of the discharge experience from their perspectives.

From our thematic analysis of the user interviews, we established our research question that would guide the development of our deliverables:

How might we create a discharge experience that is positively engaging and empowering for both pediatric cancer patient families and nursing staff?

ESTABLISHING DESIGN GOALS

We began translating our main research findings into design values that our solution should reflect. By defining various characteristics our solution should consider, we were able to establish four design goals. We determined our solution should prioritize:

Clarity

Improve transparency in the discharge process

Teamwork

Promote effective collaboration amongst staff

Proactive Planning

Encourage and plan for patient education early on

Individualized Care

Support the individual needs of a patient and patient family

After defining our design goals, we moved onto brainstorming possible solutions that reflected those values and were supported by our research findings:

In order to evaluate our possible solutions in terms of impact and feasibility, we sent out a concept evaluation survey to nurses and patient families. This process allowed us to narrow our project ideas down to a three-pronged solution.

FINAL DELIVERABLES

Deliverable #1: A patient journey map that provides additional context of the discharge process, including existing pain points, for patients and nurses.

Deliverable #2: A list of recommendations to reconfigure Epic, the patient charting system, to help bedside nurses better identify potential gaps in education.

Deliverable #3: An activity worksheet to guide patient families in creating an action plan for their first hours and days at home, post-discharge.

THE CHALLENGES

Working with a vulnerable population...

My team and I's biggest concern when working with Seattle Children's Hospital was to ensure the patient families we spoke to were comfortable and respected. We proceeded with flexibility when it came to scheduling interviews and follow-ups regarding our design solutions and gave participants a pressure-free space to speak on their experiences.

THE IMPACT AND TAKEAWAYS

The impact of well-executed research.

With the work I completed at Seattle Children's Hospital, I:

Synthesized key user needs for nursing staff and patient families during the pediatric discharge experience

Improved patient families' preparedness for at-home care
 
Identified future design opportunities for senior leadership

While working with Seattle Children's, we were impacted by COVID-19 and suddenly unable to visit the hospital and conduct research in person. These obstacles, however, pushed my team and I to be innovative with our design process and create design solutions that would be feasible to implement during the pandemic. Due to the preset end date of our collaboration with Seattle Children's, we were unable to gather insights on how our design deliverables impacted the patient discharge process in practice after delivering them. If we were to continue our work, I would like to revisit and speak to more hospital staff and patient families who have implemented and used our designs and address any new pain points that may have surfaced.

Thank you to our wonderful sponsor, Staci Heldring, for her unwavering support and guidance.

Thank you to my powerhouse capstone team who showed me what true collaboration and teamwork is.