NYU Langone Design Research: Week 1
Last week, my team came together and discussed our expectations for this project as well as our different work styles. The charter above illustrates our team values, goals, and how we plan to work through pain points. The chart below tracks what we bring to the team and when we prefer to work.
I think we did a very good job organizing the team structure and setting realistic expectations. We also set a strong foundation for transparency and understanding.
This week, we learned the problem statement of the project and began researching and outlining potential areas of investigation.
Problem Statement: How might NYU Langone Health improve its patient experience to be more inclusive, supportive, and positive for people who are transgender, nonbinary, and gender queer.
After discussing the problem statement as a team, we defined two approaches to the issue. A provider-facing approach would target the knowledge gaps and lack of training provided to healthcare professionals when it comes to treating transgender, nonbinary, and gender queer patients. On the other hand, a patient-facing approach would focus on making pre and post care services as accessible and inclusive as possible for patients.
Our main task for this week was to engage in preliminary research and interviewing in order to decide on the approach to take. For my part, I spent time reading academic research from the perspective of health care providers and transgender patients. I was able to find several clinical guides on providing care to transgender patients. In comparison, there was less emphasis on first-hand accounts or interviews from patients. This was interesting to me, because I expected the opposite.
When we came together as a team, we discussed this disparity and decided to take the patient-facing approach since provider training and tools already exist.
As we began brainstorming what this patient-facing design might look like, we identified three main pain points: a lack of trust, poor mental health care, and a lack of early education on gender identity.
I have chosen to focus on the first pain point because I think that it underscores many of the fears transgender, nonbinary, and gender queer patients have when it comes to healthcare. In order to make NYU Langone more inclusive and positive, we must first contend with a history of unequal, violent, and life-threatening experiences that the transgender, nonbinary and gender queer communities have had to face within the healthcare system. This history has led to a great deal of distrust, anxiety, and fear.
Through my initial research, I discovered that one aspect of the hospital experience that perpetuates this anxiety is the unequal power dynamic between patients and providers. Often, patients are reluctant to speak up for themselves or voice discomfort in front of their healthcare provider which leads to serious problems. A possible solution to this would be the creation of a neutral space or neutral party that allows patients to voice concerns without of retaliation or discomfort. This idea can also be expanded into a hospital-wide campaign that focuses on building a sense of community and trust between NYU Langone and transgender, nonbinary, and gender queer patients.
The campaign could include an online forum system, in-person town halls, relevant events like Q&A sessions, workshops, and lectures, and more inclusive branding. Additionally, there should be a mechanism for input and organizing from patients themselves. Trust is built through listening and active engagement, so the hospital should look to empower its patients.
Our plan for next week is to select a pain point and develop initial ideas and sketches to share with the group so that we can continue to narrow down our ideas. I plan to continue exploring the question of how NYU Langone can build trust between its providers and patients. My next steps will be to sketch out and outline what a potential campaign could look like and figure out a way to make its implementation more realistic.
