Equipping Providers For Deeper Connection With Patients
Redesign how our providers deliver spiritual care to patients
Objective
Integrate a spiritual dimension in the outpatient appointment experience to increase:
• Consumers' feeling of being loved, seen and heard
• Providers' confidence in providing spiritual care
• Team members' higher purpose and fulfillment at work
Key Skills
Rapid concept testing 1:1 interviews
Body-storming prototyping
Workshop design and facilitation
Service framework development
Role:
Joy Park, Service Design Lead
Thomas Aldinger, Project & Strategy Lead
Shelby Graves, Project Manager
Thais Senger, Research Lead
Liza Eckert, Researcher
The Challenge
AdventHealth has chaplains in its hospitals, but historically, spiritual care has not been offered to patients in doctors' offices or urgent care clinics. In 2020, AdventHealth started an initiative that extended spiritual care through a three-question patient screening assessing love, peace, and joy. The initiative was expected to be a unique differentiator for AdventHealth.
However, when the program was evaluated in 2023, it was found to have drifted from its purpose, mostly not been fully executed, and had become a checkbox process. This led to a redesign to make spiritual care a core part of AdventHealth's team member and consumer experience.
Client Department: AdventHealth Mission and Ministry
Date: June 2024 – January 2025
"What gives you a sense of love, joy, and peace in your life?"
AdventHealth Definiiton of Spiritual Care
Service Prototyping & Rapid Testing Concepts
After measuring the value and impact of the three spiritual screening questions for AdventHealth’s consumers and providers, the team redesigned the spiritual encounter between providers and patients through service prototyping with stakeholders and rapid concept testing with consumers and service providers.
Prototyping Session with a multi-disciplinary team of 20 people, bodystorming through four scenarios with varying patients' scenarios to deeply empathize with the user's perspective and gain insights through physical movement and interaction.
Spiritual Encounters Framework & 7 Service Components
We turned the learnings and insights into a framework (alpha prototype) and tested with 15 consumers through focus groups, and conducted 1:1 interviews with 9 providers and 7 practice managers.
Through multiple iterations and prototyping sessions with stakeholders, the team identified 7 service components to deliver Spiritual Care in an outpatient setting.
Spiritual Health Indicator
Consumer View
Virtual Process (E-Check in) Analog Process (Paper Cards)
Provider/MA View
Rooming Tab in Epic
The team worked closely with IT team to add a 'Spiritual Health Indicator' section under rooming tab on the EMR system, Epic.
Analog Assessment Development
Development of analog prototype. While exploring different forms to make an interactive tool with minimum breakdown, the design requirement was further defined by presenting with stakeholders and we landed on the foldable paper form.
Spiritual Care Center & Collaterals
The Spiritual Care Center is a free of charge referral-based call center that provide spiritual care and emotional support inclusive of all faith backgrounds.
Providers may not have enough time to fully address patients' spiritual care within the 15-30 minute visit. Once further need is identified, providers are able to order a referral so spiritual caregivers could provide care and document to circle back to the providers.
The collaterals on the left are resources for providers to inform patients about the Spiritual Care Center and even let them self-refer themselves. They were developed with the internal brand team.
Pilot Across 8 Clinics
In order to test the framework and service components in a live environment, the team launched pilot programs in 8 clinics across three states in US, with 200+ participants of physicians, providers, practice managers, and team members.
As part of change management, we designed a 45-minute in-clinic DIY Workshop that not only communicates the newly defined spiritual care definition and the why behind this program, but also gives time and space for clinicians to create their own process of providing spiritual care.
Preparing for in-person kick-off workshop
In-Clinic DIY workshop in conference room, nursing station and waiting room
Every providers' offices operates differently based on their patient demographics and providers' preferences. After all the workshops, I met with every practice manager and mapped how their office workflow would look like. Some even selected multiple workflows to accomodate their providers', team's, and patients' needs!
The Impact
The pilot brought a lot of excitement and clarity to leadership to re-strategize several other Spiritual Care offerings. Based on the pilot learnings from consumers, providers, and team members' perspectives, the leadership decided to further test timing components in 50 primary care offices in the next phase, and then broaden the pilot program to 100 specialty offices before launching system-wide in Q3 2025.
