Woosuk Seo
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
Effective patient-provider communication is critical to promote patient satisfaction, encourage patient involvement in care, and improve health outcomes. Although prior HCI works aim to enhance dyadic communication by improving patients’ communication skills, little is known about healthcare providers’ communication work to facilitate effective communication with their child patients. Through semi-structured interviews with 10 healthcare providers and clinic observations, our study identified four strategies that providers used in their communication with patients: building rapport, developing familiarity with care settings, respecting patients’ communication modes and preferences, and delegating small decision-making and directing questions to patients. Based on these strategies, we discuss three key elements that providers value and work toward to achieve effective communication in pediatric care practice. Our study also uncovers the detailed process of how the providers develop their strategies to tailor their communication to the patients’ specific needs and preferences, and we describe design opportunities for communication technology.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445120
The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (https://chi2021.acm.org/)