Co-designing patient-centered health communication tools for cancer care

When oncologists meet their newly diagnosed cancer patients for the first time, they discuss five key topics: diagnosis, prognosis, metastasis, and treatment options and their associated side effects. Studies have shown, however, that while oncologists may feel they have met the informational needs of patients, patients sometimes have different interpretations of what was actually covered. This leads to complications in patient understanding, which are shown to have an impact on patient self-efficacy, confidence, and treatment selection. Due to these major communication issues, particularly during such a sensitive time for patients, we are working in concert with patients and oncologists to design patient-centered health communication tools to help mitigate such problems in clinical communication. Through our discussions with both oncologists and current patients undergoing treatment, we were able to determine key design considerations to help address these issues in clinical communication and shared decision making. In addition, we investigate ways to create personalized health information take-aways for patients, so that they may be better able to process this information after their diagnosis shock has worn off.