Final Thoughts!!!

I read articles by Dr. Enid Montague from the University of Wisconsin. Her articles were all centered around patient trust in the medical field. One focused on patient trust in technology and the other was on patient trust in the provider.

The articles had a very similar structure. They followed the basic structure for a research publication. The target audience was industrial engineers or people interested in the healthcare field. The terminology used was very technical and there were several references to other publications by Industrials Engineers.

The structure and the language the articles spoke volumes about who the intended audience would be. Although the language was technical, it would not be too difficult for a non-engineer to read and comprehend.

Whats your source?

I have more to report on patient trust. This publication focused on the patient’s source of learning about health technology. The reason for this study was to help Industrial Engineers design more effective health technology. In an effort to do this, Dr. Montague points out how important it is to understand how patients learn and what they base their decisions on.

A pool of 24 patients was studied. The three major themes that emerged were; outside of the work system vs. inside the work system, when the health information was provided, and the medium used. I was not surprised to see that there were multiple outside sources used, to better understand the technology patients were encountering during their care.

Many Americans know that there are resources such as the Internet that allows answers to any question to be at your fingertips. They want to know about the machine that they are being hooked to, even if they cannot pronounce its name.

The final results did show a correlation between the knowledge being attained from the Internet, with trust in technologies, but there was no correlation with knowledge attain from health care providers and trust. I think this can be attributed to people not have trust in the healthcare provider. They may feel as if they are not being completely honest about the technology because they just want you to consent to allowing them to proceed. Others may just feel as though the provider’s opinion is biased. Whatever the case maybe, people tend to do their own research to gather knowledge of the technology the doctors as using. This is important because once, we know how to gain the patient’s trust we can better design for them.