A Group Concept Mapping Study to Define Humanizing Health Care.

Abstract

To systematically define humanizing health care to guide systems improvements that better meet patient and health care workers' needs. We conducted group concept mapping at Johns Hopkins Medicine, a large academic health system with five hospitals in Maryland and Washington, DC, outpatient practices, telemedicine, and homecare services. From October 2023 to May 2024, we recruited participants who brainstormed to the focus prompt: "One thing that can be done to more fully humanize healthcare experiences is:" The study team synthesized ideas for participants to sort them. Group concept mapping software generated cluster maps, which were interpreted by the study team to generate the concept map. In brainstorming, 63 individuals participated, including those with the perspectives of patients (n=40, 63%), caregivers (n=25, 40%), physicians (n=23, 37%), other types of health care professionals (n=14, 22%), health professions educators (n=28, 44%), and health care researchers (n=25, 40%). The 395 statements from brainstorming were synthesized into 207 ideas for sorting, which was completed by 13 participants. The final concept map included eight domains and 32 subdomains. Domains addressed: (1) effective communication, (2) health care worker attitudes, (3) health care culture, (4) health care worker community, (5) institutional policies and health care value, (6) physical and digital systems and access to care, (7) time and attention for patients, and (8) embedding patient perspectives throughout health care. Health care is fundamentally about human experiences. This concept map, generated by individuals representing the perspectives of a variety of individuals involved in health care, offers guidance for interventions and measures to make health care more humanizing.