Better Communication Means Better Care: Ariadne Labs' Serious Illness Care Program
Catherine Schofield, BS
Senior Project Coordinator, Ariadne Labs, Serious Illness Care Program'
Brigham and Women’s Hospital & the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
2024 Early Career Investigator Spotlight
November 15, 2024
Ariadne Labs’ Serious Illness Care Program envisions a world where every person affected by serious illness feels known and cared for on their own terms. The key to achieving this mission is better communication about patients’ goals, values, and priorities to inform their future care. Patients who have ‘serious illness conversations’ with their clinicians about what matters most to them are more likely to receive the care they want, feel less distress, and report better quality of life.
Our goal is to support more, earlier, and better serious illness conversations, but there are critical barriers. Health systems often lack the structures and support for these conversations. This sometimes leads to infrequent, late, or poor quality conversations. Together with the Patient Advocate Foundation’s Patient Insight Institute, we made joint efforts to address these gaps and infuse the patient voice into our work. This partnership has resulted in better and new tools to improve patient experiences and outcomes.
Revising the Serious Illness Conversation Guide
Our landmark Serious Illness Conversation Guide helps clinicians learn and honor what matters most to patients. In our 2023 revision, we listened carefully to patients in focus groups, interviews, and surveys. Their feedback shaped the Guide to be more inclusive and accessible. The improvements included language to support greater emotional safety, adding a pause for silence and exploring emotions, and incorporating questions about hope, sources of joy, and meaningful activities.
A Race Dialogues Tool
Drawing from our experience navigating difficult conversations, we created a new tool to address racism in healthcare and promote health equity. The Talking about Racism to Advance Care Equity (TRACE) tool supports clinicians in having race dialogues – conversations about race/racism among individuals holding different racial identities. The goal is to build trust and cultivate authentic relationships between patients and clinicians. We collaborated closely with patients, caregivers, clinicians, and a diverse, interprofessional advisory board to design an early prototype. Patient and caregiver input was also instrumental in shaping the final prototype that will undergo further testing and revision.
What Matters to Me Workbook
Developed in collaboration with the Conversation Project, the What Matters to Me Workbook is our patient-facing tool to help people with serious illness get ready to talk to their care team about what is most important to them. We want patients everywhere to access the Workbook and feel empowered to bring it to their clinicians.
What’s Next?
Looking ahead, our program is expanding into the chronic illness space. We welcome and honor the opportunity to engage our partners at the Patient Insight Institute again in future work. We aim to ensure that the best practices of communication and care can benefit the full spectrum of patients and reach every person, everywhere, every time