The Digital Library of Health Care Consultations and Simulated Health Care Student Teaching: Protocol for a Repository of Recordings to Support Communication Research

Background: Miscommunication in health care is a major source of poor health outcomes, complaints about health care professionals, and poor patient satisfaction. Recordings from real-life consultations provide valuable data for communication research and education. Additionally, recordings from simulation-based education of health care students can provide valuable data for health care education research. Objective: The Digital Library is a data repository supporting high-quality health care communication research. This is the single-source citation for all projects that use the Digital Library in Australia. Methods: This protocol outlines the logistics and consent process for recording and safely storing the recordings of health care consultations and simulation-based education. The processes are outlined for primary health care settings and health care educational settings as well as for health care narratives from consumers. The repository will be used to answer research questions about health care communication and provide a valuable resource for health care education. Results: Data collection for the Digital Library commenced in 2023 and is ongoing at the time of submission of this protocol. The Digital Library has been approved by Monash University’s Human Research Ethics Committee. Conclusions: The Digital Library will provide a national resource for the study of health care communication in community settings, general practice, and other environments. The health care narratives may be a valuable resource for sharing the patient perspective when living with different conditions. The research that uses this repository will be shared through regular academic channels as well as the community-based dissemination strategies of the National Centre for Healthy Ageing.