🕵🏼‍♀️ Overview + Background

🔎 Research Objectives

🚀 Methodology + Participants

As a Project Coordinator for a newly integrated department at a local hospital, I identified a long-standing inefficiency in Weekly Patient Signout Rounds—critical meetings where clinical teams discuss patient care transitions. The meetings often ran late, lacked structure, and led to physician frustration.

To address this, I initiated a research project to understand pain points and develop a data-driven strategy for improvement. By conducting stakeholder interviews, surveys, and contextual inquiries, I identified key blockers, including technology failures, lack of facilitation, and inefficient discussion formats.

The outcome? Meetings started and ended on time 80% of the time, giving the on-service physician back 45–60 minutes daily—time that could now be dedicated to patient care. These process improvements also led to better group collaboration, reduced physician frustration, and more structured discussions, ensuring that every patient received equal attention.

• Evaluate the Efficiency of Weekly Patient Signout Rounds

  • Understand how physicians and clinical teams navigate the current signout process, including meeting structure, timing, and overall effectiveness.

• Identify Pain Points and Gather Feedback

  • Uncover the challenges that contribute to inefficiencies, such as technology issues, lack of facilitation, and discussion derailments, while collecting stakeholder insights for improvement.

• Provide Data-Driven Solutions for Process Improvement

  • Develop and assess strategies to streamline meetings, enhance collaboration, and improve physician workflow, ensuring better time management and patient care.

Participants

• 15 Physicians

  • Attending and Resident physicians who actively participated in Weekly Patient Signout Rounds, providing insights on meeting structure, communication, and challenges in real-time.

• 8 Clinical Staff

  • Nurses, medical assistants, and other clinical staff who supported the signout process and had insights into workflow inefficiencies and team collaboration.

• 5 Caregivers

  • Family members or designated caregivers who were involved in patient care and communicated with the clinical team during signout rounds.

• 3 Patients

  • Children who were actively involved in the signout process, with their caregivers providing feedback on how the process impacted their care and experience.

03. Affinity Mapping

• Break down raw data into smaller observations using tools like Canvas in Dovetail.

• Group similar observations into clusters to identify patterns, trends, and emerging themes around meeting inefficiencies, communication, and overall participant experience.

04. Identify Key Themes

• Synthesize the groups into broader themes, such as issues with meeting structure, technology, time allocation, communication clarity, and need for group collaboration.

• Cross-check these themes with data from multiple participants (e.g., physicians, residents, clinical staff) to ensure consistency and validity across diverse roles.

01. Implement a New AV System

• Address the technology issues by upgrading the AV system to ensure seamless communication and presentation of patient information.

02. Assign a Weekly Meeting Moderator

• Appoint a designated moderator each week to keep the meeting on track, ensuring discussions stay focused and within the allotted time.

03. Standardize Meeting Structure

• Develop a clear, standardized format for signout presentations to ensure that all physicians stay on task, provide concise updates, and maintain consistent communication.

04. Continuous Feedback Mechanism

• Implement a quick feedback loop (such as a QR code survey) at the end of each meeting to gather anonymous input from the team and continually refine the process.

01. Implementation of Recommendations

• Assign a moderator based on call schedule; physician on call will facilitate meetings.

• Researcher to create a presentation to share with the Chief of Medicine in order to gain buy-in for new AV equipment; will send to key physicians for feedback.

• Researcher to facilitate an asynchronous workshop on meeting structure for alignment.

02. Monitor Changes

• Monitor signout rounds through follow-up surveys and feedback sessions to track improvements in meeting efficiency and physician well-being.

03. Refine Based on Feedback

• Use the ongoing feedback collected through surveys and informal discussions to refine and optimize the signout process over time.

45 - 60

Minutes Back

Physicians gained back 45-60 minutes of their daily schedule, allowing for more time spent on patient care.

~180

Survey Responses

Physicians and nurses provided 182 survey responses over the course of 6 months, contributing to a collaborative effort to improve meeting efficiency and overall patient care.

I really enjoyed this study because it was a departure from the typical UX research I do in tech. It gave me the opportunity to engage with a completely different environment and approach, which was both refreshing and rewarding. Doctors and nurses are extremely busy, so being flexible and persistent in tracking them down was crucial to gathering the necessary insights. Additionally, patients and caregivers are often under immense stress, which required a more empathetic and sensitive approach. This population needed extra patience and understanding to ensure their feedback was collected without further adding to their emotional or mental burden. Recognizing these challenges was key to ensuring the study was both effective and respectful of the participants' circumstances. It also reinforced the importance of considering human emotions and stress levels in the design of solutions. Finding joy in ensuring that solutions were practical and emotionally supportive for everyone involved made the experience even more fulfilling.

03. Inconsistent facilitation and communication led to difficulty staying on task and created challenges for caregivers.

The lack of a standard format for facilitators led to difficulty staying on task and inconsistent communication, a major pain point for caregivers who struggled with unclear patient information and transitions.

04. There is a need for increased feedback and collaboration among healthcare providers.

There is a strong need for more feedback and collaboration, as team members expressed a desire for greater input and shared decision-making during meetings.

📢 Opportunities + Recommendations

✈️ Next Steps

🎉 Impact

70%

Improved Punctuality

70% of meetings now start and end on time, compared to before when they regularly ran late.

🪩 Reflections

Methodology

• Survey

  • Designed and distributed a REDCap survey to surface broad issues.

• Contextual Inquiries

  • Observed Weekly Patient Signout Rounds to understand how physicians, clinical teams, and caregivers navigated discussions, documented patient information, and handled meeting inefficiencies in real time.

• Stakeholder Interviews

  • Conducted in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, including physicians, residents, clinical staff, patients, and their caregivers to uncover challenges, frustrations, and opportunities for improvement in the signout process.

• Follow-up Survey

  • Designed and distributed a weekly REDCap survey to capture real-time feedback over six weeks to measure impact and validate changes.

🔬 Synthesis + Analysis

01. Organize Raw Data

• Compile interview transcripts, survey responses, observational notes, and recordings.

• Centralize all data in a research repository to ensure easy access and to prevent data loss.

02. Initial Review

• Skim through the collected data to get an overall sense of recurring themes, standout moments, and critical pain points.

• Highlight or tag quotes and behaviors that align with the study's objectives, paying particular attention to areas affecting the efficiency and structure of the signout rounds.

💡 Insights

01. The outdated AV system causes significant delays and disrupts meeting flow.

The current AV system was extremely dated and only worked about half the time. While some staff were able to troubleshoot the system, losing only about 8-10 minutes of time, many staff members struggled and lost up to 20 minutes of time per meeting.

02. Only ~4 physicians facilitated meetings, creating inefficiencies and potential burnout.

There was limited diversity in the facilitation of meetings, with the responsibility typically falling on the same 3 or 4 physicians. This lack of rotation in leadership may have contributed to inefficiencies and burnout, as the same individuals were consistently tasked with managing the flow of the signout rounds.