Background: Hospitalized patients struggle to recall names and faces of their inpatient physicians. From a survey of nearly 3000 hospitalized patients by Arora et al, only 10% correctly identified one inpatient physician on their primary team (2). This can lead to fractured doctor-patient relationships and decreased patient satisfaction (1). During the COVID pandemic, this issue has been magnified by universal PPE that obscures both mouth and eyes, key features to interpersonal recognition (3). Our study implemented three interventions to enhance patients’ ability to recognize names and faces of their primary team inpatient physicians and improve patient satisfaction.
Methods: Interventions included MyChart Bedside (MCB; electronic tablets with auto-populated names and faces of the team), whiteboard (physician names written on boards located in patient rooms), and team rosters (printouts with physician names, faces, and roles). From July-November 2020, 8-15 patients from seven general medicine services were interviewed monthly. Exclusion criteria included patients who were disoriented or admitted for less than 24 hours. Patients’ ability to correctly identify their primary team physicians (residents and attendings) was measured using a survey that required matching physician names to their respective faces and roles. Statistical significance was calculated in Microsoft Excel using unpaired 2-sample T-tests. Patient satisfaction was measured by monthly Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) surveys performed by the hospital, including a subset on “Doctor Communication”.
Results: For baseline data without visual aids, patients correctly identified 33% of physicians’ names and 49% of physicians’ faces from their primary team. With whiteboard use alone, name recognition increased to 43% (p=0.46), while facial recognition remained at 50% (p=0.95). With team rosters, name recognition increased to 50% (p=0.21), and facial recognition was 50% (p=0.98). With MyChart Bedside (MCB), name recognition increased further to 75% (p=0.07), but again facial recognition minimally increased to 58% (p=0.71). During the period of project implementation, HCAHPS “Doctor Communication” scores showed a trend towards improvement in comparison to the same period from the previous year, however average scores remained similar.
Conclusions: Physician name recognition was modestly improved by each intervention, with MyChart Bedside (MCB) providing the most individual improvement. However, facial recognition remained virtually unchanged, reflecting the difficulty created by universal masking during the COVID pandemic. Generally, patients who received multiple interventions showed an additive improvement in their ability to recognize both names and faces. While there was not an absolute increase in patient satisfaction, there was an upward trend in the Doctor Communication subset of HCAHPS scores. This pilot study was limited by a small sample size, but still it helped reveal another added complexity to patient care in the COVID era. Ongoing, to overcome the mental and physical barriers to patients recognizing their inpatient physicians, a multifaceted approach using combined interventions should be utilized to communicate physician identities to hospitalized patients.
