TF-16 Innovation Per Diem: Design in Emergency Medicine

Abstract

Innovations that revolutionize health care are typically derived from non-traditional research and collaboration from seemingly disparate disciplines. The use of design principles in tackling complex health issues is gaining significant traction. If the inclusion of design in health care is to become a new standard, medical education, too, must evolve to prepare future clinicians on design thinking methods. The objective of this curriculum is 1) To introduce both medical students and EM faculty to design thinking methods; 2) To apply design thinking to address common clinical and workflow challenges that are intrinsic to the ED; 3) To create a “design in medicine” curriculum that exposes clinicians to real-world design experience that can be adopted at other institutions. Twenty first-year medical students from the Sidney Kimmel Medical College were enrolled in eight 3-hour experiential design didactics in 2017. Student teams were matched with emergency physician-mentors, acting as stakeholders and content experts in their respective academic interest (ie, education, clinical operations, ultrasound). Didactic content includes: 1) empathy building; 2) idea generation; 3) prototyping; 4) testing; 5) the user experience; 6) service design; 7) business canvas planning; 8) idea presentation Teams were tasked with applying design thinking methods to specific ED problems (ie, patient-physician identification, managing patient expectation, point-of-care ultrasound). Each team project was evaluated using the Kirkpatrick Model through self-evaluation, group presentations, essays, and conceptual project deliverables (Table 1). Innovation per DiEM concluded with an interdisciplinary presentation session to hospital administrative stakeholders and design experts. Each team delivered a concise design presentation utilizing tangible artifacts and a visualization board to a real ED problem, such as patient-physician identification, managing patient expectation, point-of-care ultrasound is a unique design curriculum. Both students and faculty mentors report new senses of accomplishment and better understanding of design through the application of novel frameworks (ie, user/patient experience design, clinical workflow optimization). Innovation per DiEM is a unique design curriculum that focuses on EM challenges with active EM clinician mentorship. The authors plan to evaluate each project longitudinally with the long-term goal of achieving level 4 of the Kirkpatrick Model through organizational outcomes such as 1) improved patient satisfaction; 2) decreased resource utilization; 3) formal design curriculum in medical education.