How did Hmong participants prefer to organize a visual pain assessment tool?

Details

Information visualization (InfoViz) tools offer a potential way to address challenges in communicating pain. Differences in communication styles among patients with limited English proficiency (LEP), interpreters, and providers contribute to significant disparities in pain care and outcomes. The study aimed to evaluate and refine a culturally appropriate InfoViz tool for assessing pain quality in LEP Hmong patients.

Researchers conducted a three-part iterative user-centered study with LEP Hmong people, bilingual Hmong people, and Hmong interpreters. Participatory design sessions evaluated and refined pain infographics for the tool; card-sorting organized the infographics to match LEP patients’ mental models; and a tool assessment identified which tool most accurately represented those mental models and was preferred in clinical settings.

The 55 participants identified three common themes for refining the pain infographics: culturally relevant colors, infographics resembling human anatomy, and action-specific squiggle lines. Card-sorting revealed three organizational themes: sensation (n = 15; 71.4%), localization (n = 6; 28.6%), and severity of pain quality (n = 5; 24.3%). Most participants selected the localization tool as the most accurate and preferred it in clinical settings. The researchers concluded that the multi-step, user-centered approach produced a culturally appropriate pain InfoViz tool for LEP Hmong patients.