Abstract Manager

Dedicated Poster

LP10 - 04

Accept

I declare I have no actual or potential conflict of interest in relation to this program.

no

General Call (Workshop, Oral Presentation, Poster Presentation)

Poster

Education Innovation

Student

Evaluation of a User-Centred Design Session for Undergraduate Medical Students

User-centered design has emerged as a novel problem-solving methodology centered around empathy, creativity, and co-designing with end users, with many applications in healthcare. Patient-centred interventions are associated with patient safety and clinical effectiveness in a wide range of diseases, settings, and study types. Additionally, user-centred design has been formally taught in other disciplines and at several American medical schools.

In this study, we conducted an educational intervention teaching 260 second-year medical students at the University of Toronto the basics of user-centred design.The intervention consisted of a 45-minute didactic lecture on design thinking principles and applications to healthcare, a 15-minute patient interview describing the gaps in their healthcare journey, and a two-hour small group workshop led by 15 healthcare professionals who were trained as facilitators for the session. During the workshop, students practiced the principles of empathizing, defining, ideating, and creating low-fidelity prototypes.

To our knowledge, this is the first time that user-centred design has been incorporated into the formal curriculum at a Canadian medical school. Evaluation included post-workshop debriefs with facilitators and post-workshop feedback by participants. Students reported enjoying the creative problem solving process but requested more specific themes or problems to solve. Facilitators gave very positive feedback and felt that the students were engaged. Suggestions for future years included coupling smaller groups of students with patients, having volunteer physicians as end-users or evaluators, and implementing a showcase or pitch competition. These lessons are important for anyone seeking to teach user-centred design for medical practitioners across the country.

Design thinking

Medical Student Education

patient-centred care

Undergraduate

Curriculum

Undergraduate

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes