Exploring the Experience of Pediatric Urgent Care

NCH retained LIFT to conduct a qualitative study to deepen its understanding of the urgent care experience of three groups of users of its Urgent Care facilities: pediatric patients, parents, and care staff. A particular focus was understanding the emotions of the parents that drive consumer behavior and inform their perception at specific points in the care journey. These insights would be used to craft messages for pre-care advertising, on-site experience design, and post-discharge communication.

LIFT implemented on-site and in-home visits. The immersive experiences at the clinics included observing and interviewing patients, their parents, and clinical and administrative staff. We also spent time with select families in their homes and domains of daily living to gain greater clarity about the lived experience before and after a care encounter. Findings were shared in a written narrative report, and recommendations were co-created during facilitated sessions with the team.

The study identified and helped the care team understand four distinct segments of the patient journey and the dominant emotions experienced by parents at each of these stages. These included negative feelings like self-doubt, anxiety, and fear, as well as positive emotions like relief, accomplishment, and self-satisfaction that parents expected to feel after a successful experience.

Several opportunities with the care site and workflow were identified as opportunities to address potential negative aspects of an experience, including the experience of waiting, the sensory and information overload that can occur when under stress, and anxiety surrounding the unknown related to a diagnosis.

In all cases, a heightened sensitivity to the emotional stressors of the care experience of the children and their parents provided valuable insights for the team. The study provided specific language used by patients and parents in this community to describe the experience, their emotions, and their hopes which could be used when redesigning training, scripting, processes, and patient support materials and processes.