Patient Journey System
Mapping what actually happens to a patient across the whole journey
Care is not one event, it is a chain of handoffs. This system maps that chain end to end so the gaps become visible: where information is lost, where a patient waits, where safety slips. It also became a teaching tool for students learning how healthcare really works.
Tools I used
How it started
I wanted to see the whole chain of care on one surface, because harm hides in the handovers between steps.
What actually happened
Mapping the journey was mostly listening — to nurses, to patients, to the gaps between what the process document said and what actually happened at 2am. The tooling was deliberately ordinary: spreadsheets, SharePoint, Power Apps, Figma for the map. What made it work was not technology but making every handover visible and owned. Once the map existed, teaching became easy: students could see where a patient is at risk instead of memorising a list.
Moments that changed the build
- Me: "Map every step, including the waiting." → Waiting turned out to be where most of the risk lived.
- Me: "Who owns this handover?" → Every unowned arrow on the map became an action item.
- Me: "Make it teachable." → The map became a teaching artefact, not just a process diagram.
What broke
The documented process and the real process disagreed almost everywhere. I mapped the real one.
What I learned
Map reality before you improve it. Boring tools are fine when the thinking is sharp.
The ebook from this project
- Read it
The Patient Journey System Story
Mapping what actually happens to a patient across the whole journey
Ebook · $9.00