Personalized Communication with Patients at the Emergency Department—An Experimental Design Study

Abstract

Communication of clinicians at the emergency department is a barrier to patient satisfaction due to lack of human connection, lack of control over the situation, low health literacy, deficient information, poor support at a time of uncertainty all affecting perceived quality of care. This explorative study tests drivers of patient satisfaction with communication of clinicians at the emergency department. The sample comprises 112 Americans from the New York greater area, who visited an emergency department in the past year. A conjoint-based experimental design was performed testing six messages in six categories. The categories encompass acknowledged aspects of communication with health providers enabling to compare among them when exploring communication at the ED by patient preferences. Respondents rated messages by the extent to which it drives their satisfaction with communication of clinicians at the emergency department. Based on the similarity of patients’ response patterns to each message, three significantly distinct mindsets of patient preferences regarding communication exchanges with clinicians at the emergency department emerged. Different conduct and communication messages drive the satisfaction of members of each mindset with the communication of clinicians at the emergency department. The strong performing messages for one mindset are irrelevant for members of other mindsets. Clinicians may identify the patient-belonging to a mindset and communicate using mindset-tailored messages. This novel strategy may enable clinicians to implement patient-centered communication, by mindset, promoting patient satisfaction and enabling clinicians to better cope with patients in the chaotic emergency department environment.