HMC Ethics Forum | Pulse Check: Trust, Power, and the Architecture of Care

Using real patient experiences, this presentation examines how communication, documentation, and system processes shape trust and diagnostic pathways in complex care. It highlights how small moments across the healthcare system can influence patient safety and long-term engagement in care.

Objectives:

1. Recognize how early clinical assumptions and electronic health record documentation can influence patient trust and diagnostic decision-making.
2. Identify ways that clinician communication style and clinical posture affect patient engagement and willingness to return for care.
3. Describe how documentation accuracy and information flow between clinicians influence downstream interpretation of patient symptoms.

Speaker Bio:

Sarayah Brenda Obonyo is a graduate student in Information Management at the University of Washington and a patient advocate whose work focuses on how information breakdowns in healthcare contribute to diagnostic delay and patient harm. Her master’s research practicum, When Information Fails: Diagnostic Delay and Information Breakdowns in Rare Disease Care, examines how gaps in information flow between patients, clinicians, and healthcare systems shape clinical reasoning and can delay life-saving diagnoses. Originally from Mathare in Nairobi, Kenya, Sarayah began her U.S. education at Edmonds College, where she served as Student Body President before transferring to the University of Washington to study Informatics. She currently serves on the Patient and Family Centered Care (PFCC) Steering Committee at UW Medicine and will graduate with her Master of Science in Information Management this June.