Abstract
The key challenges associated with the design of doctor-patient communication mainly include time constraints, cultural and language barriers and health literacy of the patients accessing care. The implications of the gaps in effective doctor-patient communication may lead to lack of compliance to treatment, weakened rapport building and lack of trust in the healthcare services. This paper qualitatively explores the context of the challenges associated with doctor-patient communication from a health care provider perspective. The main themes identified by in-depth interviews with clinicians were issues related to lack of trust, validity of patient’s information, lack of patient engagement and empowerment, and reluctance to give feedback. These factors contribute to mismanagement of patient expectations and hinder effective doctor-patient communication. We propose taking a human-centered design approach to formulate new communication strategies based on the idea that data storytelling practices can potentially be implemented as a transformative approach, which embed narratives with personal health information to create more meaningful and comprehensible interactions. These stories may help by utilizing the patient’s lived experiences to contextual ize medical information and build empathy. The findings of the research suggest that there is a potential of integrating storytelling approaches in clinical communication and practice to represent health care data.
Keywords
Doctor-patient communication; Data storytelling; Healthcare narratives; Design narratives
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.48
Citation
Zehra, S., Jacobs, N.,and Richards, D.(2025) Exploring the potential for data storytelling practices in healthcare communication, in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.48
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 9 - Healthcare Design
Exploring the potential for data storytelling practices in healthcare communication
The key challenges associated with the design of doctor-patient communication mainly include time constraints, cultural and language barriers and health literacy of the patients accessing care. The implications of the gaps in effective doctor-patient communication may lead to lack of compliance to treatment, weakened rapport building and lack of trust in the healthcare services. This paper qualitatively explores the context of the challenges associated with doctor-patient communication from a health care provider perspective. The main themes identified by in-depth interviews with clinicians were issues related to lack of trust, validity of patient’s information, lack of patient engagement and empowerment, and reluctance to give feedback. These factors contribute to mismanagement of patient expectations and hinder effective doctor-patient communication. We propose taking a human-centered design approach to formulate new communication strategies based on the idea that data storytelling practices can potentially be implemented as a transformative approach, which embed narratives with personal health information to create more meaningful and comprehensible interactions. These stories may help by utilizing the patient’s lived experiences to contextual ize medical information and build empathy. The findings of the research suggest that there is a potential of integrating storytelling approaches in clinical communication and practice to represent health care data.