Peiqi Wang
Establishing trust between parents and medical personnel in neonatal care by designing information behaviour

RESEARCH BACKGROUND

This PhD by practice focuses on the communication experience between the parents of newborn babies and medical staff in the process of neonatal treatment. The term ‘neonatal’ refers to newborns in the first 28 days of life (Bliss, n.d.). Neonatal care (in a hospital's neonatal unit) is provided for babies who are either born preterm (before 37 weeks’ gestation), with a medical situation which requires treatment, or where they have a low birthweight (Bliss, n.d.). Contemporary environmental conditions are becoming a more difficult context for childbirth, and work pressures, environmental pollution and the increase in late pregnancy has caused an increase in premature births year on year (WHO, 2012).

The current information providing system and information which collects from feedback surveys in neonatal care field are not impactful to enhance the neonatal care treatment experience straightforwardly. The system which provides information to parents of patients is in a top-down model. The group who write the information is mainly medical professions, even the global organisation starts to invite parents committees into neonatal treatment guideline producing progress. The information is not ease to absorb by parents especially when they are under pressure of the treatment. Sometimes, a large amount of information can increase fears and stress of parents in the subconscious. At present, the research on the doctor-patient relationship is mainly carried out through a single questionnaire for patients after treatment. Some researchers summarise the grades by aiming at the problems, thus analysing the trust of patients and their families in the medical staff involved in the treatment. These studies have no clear standard measurement and are not closely integrated with therapeutic practice. In addition, the relevant research did not consider the influence of culture on the results. Due to the differences in treatment cases and participants, the information summarised after treatment is difficult to be efficiently used in the treatment process to others. The project will conduct research through two hospitals in Beijing and London with the highest-level wards for newborns to understand the relationship between information and trust in different cultural backgrounds. The project will create a framework which look upon the neonatal care holistically, flexible to use by the relevant stakeholders, and enable to empower parents to input at various stages of the treatment.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This study focuses on the information exchange between parents and medical staff in the neonatal wards of two major hospitals, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London and Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing. The practical information collected from Beijing and London is combined with the information learned from the literature, and the information related to trust and information exchange is summarised and extracted by mapping, and the similarities and differences among them are considered. The extracted information will be carried out in the form of workshops in two cities with medical and cultural backgrounds.

EXPECTED RESULTS

The project will eventually be presented in the form of a framework of information exchange and trust. The framework finally summarised by this design research project will be dedicated to helping the families and medical personnel of neonatal patients who have just started treatment, combining trust, treatment plans and understanding of relevant neonatal treatment knowledge. And through the medical staff and the patient's family members to summarise, to improve the neonatal treatment experience.

POTENTIAL IMPACTS

Nowadays, various fields are encouraging the development of cross-disciplinary cooperation. In the cooperation, it is very important for participants to have relevant knowledge from different backgrounds and reach a certain level of knowledge balance. Parents' participation in neonatal treatment can actually be used as a cross-disciplinary cooperation mode, but the problem is the unequal level of medical knowledge. The project will collect information through practice to help parents effectively participate in the treatment process so as to improve the treatment efficacy. The results of the research aim not only to solve the problems that exist in neonatal cases, but also to contributed to the experience of non-professionals who need to participate in other professional fields.