Lora Appel*, University Health Network, Toronto, Canada Track: Practice Presentation Topic: Consumer empowerment, patient-physician relationship, and sociotechnical issues Presentation Type: Oral presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Building: Sheraton Maui Resort Room: C - Napili Date: 2014-11-13 02:50 PM – 03:35 PM Last modified: 2014-09-04

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Healthcare is currently characterized by “more to do, more to know and more people involved than ever before.” Due to frequent staff turnover and rotations in teaching hospitals, many patients cannot recognize their physicians by face and many staff cannot identify their colleagues by name. This inability to identify healthcare professionals has negative impacts on inter-professional relationships, hospital workflow, patient-provider communication, patient empowerment and satisfaction, and ultimately on the quality of care.

We report on results from “Put a Face to a Name –Part A”, a randomized control trial (ClinicalTrials.gov #NCT01658644) conducted at a large teaching hospital in Toronto, Canada. Our objective was to evaluate whether providing patients with names, photographs, and roles of their clinical care team during the hospital stay, impacts their ability to know their clinicians and affects the overall experience communicating with their clinical care-team. The intervention used in this trial served as a prototype for the development of a smartphone application for use by both patients and hospital staff.

For this study, researchers created customized handouts for every clinical care-team on the General Internal Medicine wards, displaying names and roles, or names, roles, and photographs of clinicians. Patients were randomized into three study groups: Group A (the control group) did not receive any handout, as per current standard of care. Group B received the handout with names and roles of their care-team members. Group C received the handout that displayed photographs, in addition to names and roles of the clinicians. Prior to discharge patients were given a standardized questionnaire testing their recall of the clinicians and asking about their overall satisfaction with communicating with the care-team.

Previous literature states that 60% of patients cannot name any of their clinicians. Of the186 patients surveyed (mean age 61, control n=60; names n=65; photos n=61), those receiving photos in the handout correctly identified significantly more clinicians by photograph (p=0.001) and recalled more names (p=0.002) than patients assigned to the control group. We also found that 70% of the surveyed patients preferred to receive clinicians’ photos compared to just names.

Surprisingly, throughout the trial, hospital physicians and nurses repeatedly requested to receive copies of the handout tool (designed for patients), with photographs of the care-team members, because it helped them to familiarize themselves with their colleagues. In response to this unforeseen interest by staff, the research team conducted in-depth interviews with 20 clinicians of various professional roles, to better understand their needs. The findings prompted the idea of an application for use by both patients and hospital staff. While the initial paper-based tool used in the study was relatively simple, intuitive, and seemingly cost effective, it cannot be a sustainable solution.

We used the study as a proof-of-concept to support the creation of a mobile application enabling users (both patients and clinicians) to view and connect with staff working on their ward. The current version of the ‘Face2Name’ app was iteratively designed in PDSA cycles and tailored to accommodate hospital workflow and the needs of the different users.