DESIGNING A HEALTH CONSUMER-FRIENDLY RADIOLOGY REPORT USING A PATIENT-CENTERED APPROACH

Abstract

In this dissertation, we needed to do four studies to reach the main objective of this dissertation. The fifth goal, which is the main one, is to reach a patient-friendly radiology report that can be easily understood. Study one: Full Radiology Report through Patient Web Portal: A Literature Review Alarifi, M., Patrick, T., Jabour, A., Wu, M., & Luo, J. (2020). Full Radiology Report through Patient Web Portal: A Literature Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(10), 3673. The aim of this study discusses the gap between the patient web portal and providing a full radiology report. A literature review was conducted to examine radiologists, physicians, and patients’ opinions and preferences of providing patients with online access radiology reports. The databases searched were Pubmed and Google Scholar and the initial search included 927 studies. After review, 47 studies were included in the study. We identified several themes, including patients’ understanding of radiology reports and radiological images, as well as the need for decreasing the turnaround time for reports availability. The existing radiology reports written for physicians are not suited for patients. Further studies are needed to guide and inform the design of patient friendly radiology reports. One of the ways that can be used to fill the gap between patients and radiology reports is using social media sites. Study two: Understanding patient needs and gaps in radiology reports through online discussion forum analysis Alarifi, M., Patrick, T., Jabour, A., Wu, M., & Luo, J. (2020). Understanding patient needs and gaps in radiology reports through online discussion forum analysis. Insights into imaging. Our objective is to investigate patient needs and understand information gaps in radiology reports using patient questions that were posted on online discussion forums. We leveraged online question and answer platforms to collect questions posted by patients to understand current gaps and patient needs. We retrieved six hundred fifty-nine (659) questions using the following sites: Yahoo Answers, Reddit.com, Quora, and Wiki Answers. The questions retrieved were analyzed and the major themes and topics were identified. The questions retrieved were classified into eight major themes. The themes were related to the following topics: radiology report, safety, price, preparation, procedure, meaning, medical staff, and patient portal. Among the 659 questions, 35.50% were concerned with the radiology iii report. The most common question topics in the radiology report focused on patient understanding of the radiology report (62 of 234 [26.49%]), image visualization (53 of 234 [22.64%]), and report representation (46 of 234 [19.65%]). We also found that most patients were concerned about understanding the MRI report (32%; n=143) compared with the other imaging modalities (n=434). Using online discussion forums, we discussed major unmet patient needs and information gaps in radiology reports. These issues could be improved to enhance radiology design in the future. Study three: The Development of Radiology Report Literacy Assessment Tool Diagnostic imaging and radiotherapy have become an important part of medical care. Patient understanding of radiology reports can improve their level of engagement and communication. There is little known about measuring a patient’s literacy level of a radiology report. The aim of this study is to design a tool to measure the radiology literacy of patients. We have designed and tested a radiology literacy tool. Participants were split into two groups and each group was given a radiology report sample to assess their understanding of the report. Participants also answered the radiology report literacy questions and the correlation between the understanding of th