Finding the Value: Identifying the Key Elements of Recorded Clinic Visits From the Perspective of Patients, Clinicians, and Caregivers.

Objective: We aimed to understand what patients, caregivers and clinicians identified as the most important information from their audio-recorded clinic visits and why.

Methods: We recruited patients, caregivers and clinicians from primary and speciality care clinics at an academic medical centre in New Hampshire, U.S. Participants reviewed a recording or transcript of their visit, identifying meaningful moments and the reasons why. Two researchers performed a summative content analysis of the data.

Results: Sixteen patients, four with caregivers, from six clinicians participated. Patients, caregivers and clinicians identified a median of 7.5 (3-20), 12.5 (6-50) and 18 (4-31) meaningful visit moments, respectively. Moments identified were similar across stakeholders, including patient education, symptoms, recommendations and medications. Four themes emerged as a rationale for finding visit information meaningful: providing and receiving information, sharing the patient experience, forming a care plan, and providing emotional support. Clinicians rarely identified patient statements as important.

Conclusion: There was considerable agreement between patients, clinicians and caregivers regarding visit information that is most valuable. Patient contributions may be undervalued by clinicians.

Practice Implications: These findings can be used to improve patient-centred visit communication by focusing visit summaries and decision support on information of the most value to participants.