Using Priorities of Hospitalized Patients and Their Caregivers to Develop Personas

Hospitalized patients and their caregivers often access technologies like patient portals to understand what happens during their hospital stay. Although this access can lead to more patient engagement and positive health outcomes, many find that the technology does not support their needs. As a first step toward improving patient-facing technologies we create personas for hospitalized patients and their caregivers by following the Q Methodology, a technique for quantifying subjective opinion. We clustered 28 hospitalized patients' and 19 caregivers' attitudes towards receiving and managing information and working with their care team. We contribute three patient personas: patients who are (1) accommodating information seekers, (2) involved safety guardians, and (3) self-managing participators. We identify three caregiver personas: (1) cooperative information seekers, (2) vocal participators, and (3) hands-off safety guardians. These personas can inform future tools designed to support communication and information management for hospitalized patients and caregivers.