Antonia Yunge

Emergency Rooms are a particularly negative experience. It’s an instance that brings anxiety, frustration and vulnerability, both to patients and their families. These negative feelings are usually aggravated by the complete lack of information and support in the environment.

Information is hard to read and difficult to understand. It is also visually inconsistent and poorly organized, making wayfinding nearly impossible

“How am I supposed to find the information I need in this sea of paper?” —Patient, Emergency Room (Translated from Spanish)

Through different methodologies, I researched 3 public hospitals in the Metropolitan Region focusing on the experience of patients and their families in the ER.

A critical finding was that most (59%) of the people attending Emergency Rooms don’t know how the care process works. In particular, they don’t know that medical care won’t be in order of arrival, but according to the severity of the patient—measured with a 5-point scale in which a higher number involves longer waiting time. This information was vital to understand the care process, setting expectations and managing frustration, but it wasn't properly communicated.

“I don't know what's going on. Everybody who got here after me are already inside! People are cutting the line” —Mom, Pediatric Hospital (Translated from Spanish)

On the other side, health teams spend a lot of time explaining the process to patients and dealing with their unwelcoming reaction. This creates a tense atmosphere, and increases frustration and uncertainty among patients and their families.

To start thinking of interventions that could help improve the experience in the ER—for both the providers and receivers—we engaged in different activities with the staff and the patients to explore critical areas of the care process. We prototyped different interventions and gathered feedback from multiple stakeholders to create the final proposal.

The proposal is an informational strategy to improve the experience and educate patients and their company about the care process in the ERs.

The patient has to go through 4 steps in their journey: Registration, Triage, Waiting Room & Medical Care.

Patient’s are guided throughout all the process and the steps needed to receive care are clearly explained through information panels, pamphlets, and videos.

The project also includes signage, pictograms, illustrations, printed handouts, and a web-based tool for hospital teams to produce customized printed materials that retain consistency with the rest of the system's information.