Elderly Medical Education
Spark Health Innovation Lab
Team: Chase Airmet, Kyle Burke, Tyson Verhall, Jordan Renner
Doctor Contact: Derek Sakata
Client: Moran Eye Center
As a research fellow for the Spark Health Innovation Lab at the University of Utah I was tasked with managing a team of students as we worked with surgeons, nurses, and patients with the goal of improving the education provided to cataract surgery patients. This included work initializing contacts with nurses, directors, and doctors. Presenting findings at various medical board meetings, and refining and directing students work to meet the Spark Lab design standards.
How do we improve elderly patient comprehension of the educational material given after surgery?
Tasked with this problem given to us by Dr. Derek Sakata we jumped into the Spark Labs research and design process. We found early on that the key problems facing cataract surgery patients was that since the average age of cataract patients was 60+ the existing materials and practices in educating these patients did not cater to their physical and mental limitations. Patients were tasked with remembering the required steps to caring for themselves through only verbal instructions and this right after their post operation while the effects of the anesthesia were still with them. Although the procedure is an outpatient surgery where the patient is required to have a family member or friend accompany them nurses and doctors frequently had returning patients who had not understood or preformed correctly the necessary care as they healed.
Research
For the project we followed the Spark Health Innovation Labs design & research process. This started with phases observation followed by analysis of findings.
Ideations
After the Analysis phase with direction from the stakeholders we proceeded with the ideation of an educational pamphlet and video.
Results
After initial phase of work when brought before the head nurses of the department they have chosen not to pursue the education system we have proposed.
The process and concept were presented by Kyle Burk at the Utah State Capitol during a student innovation event.
Process
With this process we approached the problem with the mindset of balancing need, context, and sustainability to achieve a human centered design process.