Perioperative pathways attempt to standardize care, improve surgical outcomes and enhance the patient experience before, during and after surgery. At UCSF Health, a barrier to perioperative pathway adherance is mismatched expectations among providers, staff and patients across the care continuum.  

Clinical Innovation Center service designers conducted an in depth discovery phase to understand the human and system factors associated with setting expectations in the context of patient education. Design principles derived from this formative reseach guided the re-design of the educational experience to improve cognitive processing and uptake of information while emphasizing the role of the patient in their own recovery. An information framework was developed that can be applied to any surgical pathway.