Giving patients a voice

Tapering Talk

For patients who have been on opioids for a long time, tapering off of their medication can be scary. This short video combines tapering experience stories with expert content from clinicians.

“Tapering Talk” was designed in partnership with doctors at UC Davis Health, and was funded by two NIH (National Institutes of Health) grants led by PI Dr. Stephen Henry.

The video is integrated into MyChart, an online patient portal reaching patients and caregivers throughout the UC Davis Health system. A study soon to be published in the Patient Education and Counseling journal found that this narrative-based video enhanced patients’ perceptions of the effectiveness of tapering and their tapering self-efficacy.

Teams I collaborated with:

• UC Davis Center for Design in the Public Interest (DiPi)

• UC Davis Health Clinicians

• UC Davis Health internal communications team

• Social science researchers

Key elements of my role:

• Storyboarded a narrative to meet the patient needs and the educational goals of the partnering physicians

• Edited and produced the interview clips into the final video

• Designed interstitial graphics and animations

• Voiceover narration

Outcomes:

• An educational video featuring the voices of the community it was produced for

• Distribution throughout the UC Davis Health system

• A journal article based on research findings about the effectiveness of the video

Building a narrative

Culled from hours of interviews and discussions, the challenge was to build a cohesive narrative. Not only did the video need to be informative; the story also had to be framed around patients’ experiences and told in their own words.

The segments of the video cover the big questions patients had about tapering.

• “What is tapering?” defines tapering, and patients talk about their fears and misconceptions around the process

• “Why should I consider tapering?” covers stories about the discomforts and dangers of opioid medications

• “How would I manage my pain with fewer opioids?” lets patients share non-opioid tactics that have worked for them

• “What are some of the benefits of tapering?” the last segment of the video, gives stories of hope

Process

The process was a true embodiment of “democratic design,” created with a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, social science researchers, and designers. The audience—patients who take opioids for chronic pain—determined what topics were most important and relevant to them. The video shared this content in their voices.

1

A series of focus groups were convened, bringing together a diverse group of patients within the UC Davis Health system. These sessions brought up insights around shared themes and concerns.

2

After the focus groups, a small subset of patients were invited back to be interviewed in depth and to share personal stories on camera.

3

The resulting footage was roughly edited and shown to doctors and a new set of focus groups to determine which topics were most important, compelling, and informative to both doctors and patients.

4

The selected subset of clips was grouped by theme, reordered, and interspersed with additional voice-over narration to create a cohesive story.