A design-led patient campaign development process for disseminating the concept of shared decision making

Abstract

Design researchers and practitioners have started to collaborate with experts in diverse areas shifting the focus to healthcare, education and business. In one of these areas, healthcare, design researchers and practitioners have been exploring ways of engaging patients more actively in their own healthcare and wellbeing. Person-centred care and shared decision making are timely approaches in modern healthcare systems, where designers can leave their stamp by collaborating with stakeholders to create better healthcare services through finding different ways to communicate information, develop methods for engagement and undertaking design research to build an understanding of the barriers. Starting from the above perspective, this paper explores the role of design in a long-term collaboration between a hospital and a design school in Denmark focussing on the co-creation of a patient campaign for shared decision making (SDM). As evidenced by this research, using design expertise for supporting the development of SDM tools, processes as well as campaigns holds promises for assisting the implementation efforts at the clinic. It holds opportunities for raising stakeholder awareness and knowledge about the general concept and goals of SDM attracting core testimonials and potentially enabling a mutual understanding among the stakeholders based on empathy.

Keywords:

• Shared decision making
• co-creation
• patient campaigns
• patient decision aids
• design-led process

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the design developers, Kerstin Bro Egelund, Rikke Karlsen and Denise Clemente Joergensen, who facilitated the design development process through extensive field studies and also the patients, relatives, nurses and doctors who participated in this study with their invaluable inputs.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Canan Akoglu

Canan Akoglu is Associate Professor at Design School Kolding in Denmark (DSKD), trained as an architect with a PhD degree in industrial design from Istanbul Technical University. She participated in the project in shared decision making between DSKD and Vejle Hospital in 2017 focussing on service design and co-creative approaches.

Kathrina Dankl

Kathrina Dankl is Associate Professor at Design School Kolding in Denmark (DSKD), trained as an industrial designer with a doctoral degree in design anthropology. Between 2014–2017, she accompanied the collaboration between DSKD and Vejle Hospital, initiated to develop a design-led, co-creational approach to Shared Decision Making in oncological care.

Karina Dahl Steffensen

Karina Dahl Steffensen is a medical oncologist with a PhD in biomarker research in ovarian cancer. She is Professor at Department of Clinical Oncology, Vejle/Lillebaelt Hospital, Denmark. As a Director of a Centre for Shared Decision Making at Vejle/Lillebaelt Hospital, she has launched a number of SDM research projects.