Making Emergency Care Interpretable: Journey-Level Information Breakdowns from Patient and Caregiver Perspectives

Emergency departments (EDs) are highly dynamic and uncertain care environments in which patients struggle to understand their current status, what may happen next, and the reasons behind waiting and care progression. This work presents an exploratory qualitative study examining how information-related challenges unfold across patients' ED journeys. Through semi-structured interviews with patients (n = 5) and caregivers (n = 7) and inductive thematic analysis, we identify three recurring information breakdowns across ED stages: limited process legibility and guidance, uninterpretable waiting, and a lack of understandable intermediate explanations. We introduce a patient-facing conceptual prototype that illustrates how existing operational states could be translated into patient-comprehensible updates. Designed as a low-burden, illustrative concept, the prototype aims to support patients' and caregivers' sensemaking of ED care progression without introducing additional clinical workload. Together, these breakdowns informed corresponding design modules in our prototype, clarifying how journey-level information support can be systematically translated into patient-facing design.