Systemic Patient Agency
How might we equip home-care nurses to create a care setting that enhances patients' agency for holistic welfare?
- Role
- Designer, three-person team with Paulina (Mexico) and Kimberly (Colombia); Care Topics masterclass, LUCA School of Arts (lecturers Andrea Wilkinson, Niels Hendriks, Floris Carpentero)
- Partner
- Wit-Gele Kruis, one of the largest home-care providers in Flanders, Belgium; a three-day masterclass responding to its day-to-day challenges, November 2025
- Methods
- Systemic mapping of the service landscape; Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a sorting frame; rapid prototyping of low-tech tools; presentation to WGK staff
- Outputs
- A four-stage patient plan; check-out cards with stamp cues; a nurse prompt notepad; a stackable routine game sheet; a personalised story poster; question prompts for the nurse tablet portal
what was done
WGK's challenge was framed as "cross-selling" its services. The team reframed it: nurses already know their patients, so the question became how to help patients anticipate and voice their own care needs. The current services (family care, nutritional advice, reference nurses, care devices, the personal alarm, neighbourhood teams) were mapped and regrouped by Maslow's needs into a service system with four stages, from first session to long-term follow-up.
what came out
Low-tech interventions that fit a nurse's routine rather than add to it: a check-out card with an icon stamp, a fast assessment notepad, a stackable game sheet on home, routine and family, a personalised "peace of mind" story poster for the patient, and question prompts for the tablet portal. Presented to Wit-Gele Kruis at the end of the masterclass.
