Identity cards help patients identify their doctors

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Patient Communication
• Healthcare Quality Improvement

Background:

• Hospitalized patients receive extensive information, often struggling to retain key details about their care team.
• Initial audits revealed low patient recall of medical staff names, impacting communication and satisfaction.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the effectiveness of identification (ID) cards in improving patient recall of their treating team members.
• To evaluate the impact of ID cards on patient retention of this information over time.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of identification cards detailing patient treatment teams.
• Pilot testing through Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles on medical and surgical wards.
• Pre- and post-intervention patient recall assessments.

Main Results:

• Patient recall of at least one treating team member increased from 33% to 67% post-intervention on a medical ward.
• Recall retention at 5 days improved significantly, with 67% of patients remembering a team member's name.
• Surgical ward results showed consultant recall improved from 54% to 87% after ID card implementation.

Conclusions:

• Identification cards are a simple, effective tool to enhance patient recall and retention of medical team information.
• This intervention improves patient-physician communication, satisfaction, and overall quality of care.
• ID cards are easily implementable and have received hospital patient safety committee approval for wider trust-wide adoption.