Sprint One: Understanding Physician Burnout
As healthcare providers continue to grapple with pandemic pains, the issue of physician burnout has been pushed to the forefront of public debate. From unmanageable workloads to tedious documentation requirements, one thing is clear — outdated EHR systems are contributing to these challenges.
Over the next several months, our MHCI Capstone team aims to gain a deeper understanding of the various factors contributing to physician burnout — with a focus on millennials — and the constraints imposed by EHR systems.
This project is made possible by a partnership with Optum, a subsidiary of the nation’s largest healthcare and insurance provider, UnitedHealth Group.
This article marks the start of a series aimed at capturing our progress and the twists and turns along the way.
Our Team
We are five graduate students in Carnegie Mellon University’s Master of Human-Computer Interaction program, a degree offered by the School of Computer Science.
Sophia Timko is a design researcher and strategist who is passionate about turning research insights into tangible design innovations. Prior to CMU, she crafted both physical environments and digital experiences as a design researcher at Gensler, an architecture firm, and at Runyon Design, a product design and venture consultancy focused on digital product and business design.
Priya Jain is an aspiring product manager who is passionate about creating seamless products by using design strategy. She has a background in Cognitive Science and Economics. Previously, Priya interned as a program manager for Amazon. She also completed an internship at H2O.ai where worked in an AI lab. She’s eager to explore technology solutions to build better experiences.
Miley Hu is a UX Designer with a background in cognitive science and design innovation. Prior to CMU, Miley worked and interned as a UX Designer across different industries, including SaaS and healthcare. She’s interested in learning how to integrate emerging technologies, such as IoT, AR, and ML, to create powerful solutions.
Tamara Zilovic is a UX/ Visual designer with a strong interest in blending digital and physical mediums. With a background in architecture, Tamara previously worked as an in-house visual designer for KSS Architects, developing computer-aided renderings and animations to envision new spaces. At CMU, she’s assisting with research related to hazard analysis for AI engineering.
Anisa Jibrell is a journalist-turned-designer focused on mixing my passion for technology with storytelling to create memorable user experiences. As a reporter, she covered drugmakers, automakers, among other entities. At CMU, she helping to design a digital game aimed at increasing health literacy in marginalized communities.
Team Roles
Before diving into the problem space, we created a team charter to define our roles, highlight expectations, and share our learning goals. We used a “Getting to Know Each Other” chart to share our strengths, weaknesses, and communication styles.
Kickoff Meeting
After connecting with our client and setting up an introductory meeting, we began planning for our kickoff meeting.
We were met with the challenge of coming up with creative ways to generate meaningful discussions with Optum in a virtual setting.
We decided to divide our kickoff into two sessions packed with exercises aimed at deconstructing the problems space and understanding Optum and their expectations.
Our first session will include a future mapping exercise called “Postcards from the Future.” The goal is to encourage our client to imagine what lies ahead for physicians and EHR technology.
Research Plan
We were pretty eager to get the ball rolling and begin analyzing documents surrounding EHR technology and other underlying causes of physician burnout.
Our current research plan outlines the following objectives:
1. Understand the underlying causes of poor user experiences for physicians.
2. Explore how experiences with digital tools worsen physician burnout.
3. Investigate how millennial physician experiences are different from past generations.
4, Understand how burnout levels change with practice type.
5. Map the physician workflow to identify pain points with current technologies.
To get a better grasp of the internal and external decisions contributing to these issues, we created a stakeholder map to capture how all of these competing interests and demands influence the well-being of physicians.
We also held a whiteboard session to reveal the gaps in our understanding around EHR workflows and the flow of health information. The session generated several important questions that we set aside for our kickoff meeting.
It’s safe to say we were left with a lot of burning questions surrounding the current state of EHR systems. As we approach our first kickoff session with Optum stakeholders, we look forward to deepening our understanding of the burdensome, digital tools that plague healthcare environments.
