How do families decide when and how to contact pediatric clinicians? A qualitative study

In the evolving communication landscape, parents now have several methods for communicating with their child's healthcare team. This study aims to understand how parents decide when and how to use various communication tools to contact their child's healthcare team.

We conducted a qualitative study through semi-structured interviews of English and Spanish-speaking parents or caregivers of children 17 years old and younger to explore their experiences, approaches, and reasons for initiating communication with their child's healthcare team via different communication modalities (e.g., telephone, portal, in-person). Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded using a thematic analysis in a qualitative description approach.

Participants (n=20 English, n=20 Spanish) described a two-step decision-making process where parents first determine 1) whether to contact the healthcare team and 2) if deciding to contact the healthcare team, how to contact them. Five cross-cutting dimensions and corresponding sets of factors that informed the two-step decision-making process conceptual model included: sources of information (internet search, personal experience, personal network), clinical needs (administrative request, complexity, severity, urgency), past experiences (communication, satisfaction), family priorities (communication dynamics, continuity with clinician, technology use), and system constraints (access barriers, language-related barriers). Each of the dimensions and corresponding factors were represented in both languages except for language-related barriers, which was only discussed by Spanish-speaking participants.

The expansion of communication into multiple methods has complicated the healthcare communication landscape, and parents describe a two-step process for conceptualizing whether and how to communicate with their children's healthcare team.