SHM Converge Scientific Abstract ePoster Gallery-"What Matters Most" to Patients on a General Medicine Service

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This study examined whether asking hospitalized patients, “What matters most to you today?” (WMMTYT) can systematically identify patient concerns during inpatient care. The authors noted that no standard question exists for eliciting patient priorities on general medicine services, and that routinely asking this question may reveal unmet needs.<br /><br />Between October 2023 and February 2024, the team randomly surveyed patients on two acute care general medicine units at a 600-bed tertiary hospital. Patients with delirium, end-stage dementia, or active interpersonal conflict were excluded. Responses were recorded in Qualtrics and grouped into common domains.<br /><br />The sample included 119 patients across 148 encounters. The group was 58% male, with a mean age of 56 years, and 9% required an interpreter for limited English proficiency.<br /><br />Patient answers fell into several categories, including overall health improvement, symptom management or physical needs, discharge planning, logistics of hospital care, spiritual/emotional needs, family needs, requests for medical information, and perceptions of medical care quality. Example responses included “to get better,” “to get out of pain,” “help getting housing,” and “keeping me informed of all my results.”<br /><br />The authors concluded that WMMTYT offers a simple, standardized way to surface inpatient concerns that may otherwise go unrecognized. A noted limitation was that some patients seemed hesitant to answer because they did not want to appear demanding. Future work will focus on making the question a quality improvement metric, increasing consistency in asking it, and evaluating how well patient concerns are addressed and whether doing so improves patient satisfaction.

Asset Subtitle

Ashish Gandhi

Meta Tag

Author List Ashish Gandhi, Christopher Mandujano, Isabella Leal, James D. Harrison, Kirsten N. Kangelaris, Luigi Neves Dantas Andrade, Margaret C. Fang, Syed Salman Ali

Category Research

Concept Patient Concern

Concept Symptom Management

Concept Patient-Reported Outcome Measure

Concept Discharge Planning

Concept Unmet Needs

Distinguished Non-Finalist

Presenter Organization University of California, San Francisco

Presenting Author Ashish Gandhi

Track Quality Improvement

Keywords

patient priorities

inpatient care

hospitalized patients

What matters most to you today

patient concerns

quality improvement

symptom management

discharge planning

patient satisfaction

general medicine

Patient Concern

Symptom Management

Patient-Reported Outcome Measure

Discharge Planning

Unmet Needs