Abstract

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Background: A patient charter is an explicit declaration of the rights of patients within a particular health care setting. In early 2020 the Save the Children Emergency Health Unit deployed to Cox’s Bazar Bangladesh to support the establishment of a severe acute respiratory infection isolation and treatment centre as part of the COVID-19 response. We developed a charter of patient rights and had it translated into Bangla and Burmese; however, the charter remained inaccessible to Rohingya and members of the host community with low literacy. Methods: To both visualise and contextualise the patient charter we undertook a graphic elicitation method involving both the Rohingya and host communities. We carried out two focus group discussions during which we discussed the charter and agreed how best to illustrate the individual rights contained therein. Results: Logistical constraints and infection prevention and control procedures limited our ability to follow up with the original focus group participants and to engage in back-translation as we had planned; however, we were able to elicit rich descriptions of each right. Reflecting on our method we were able to identify several key learnings relating to: 1) our technique for eliciting feedback on the charter verbatim versus a broader discussion of concepts referenced within each right, 2) our decision to include both men and women in the same focus group, 3) our decision to ask focus group participants to describe specific features of each illustration and how this benefited the inclusivity of our illustrations, and 4) the potential of the focus groups to act as a means to introduce the charter to communities. Conclusions: Though executing our method was operationally challenging we were able to create culturally appropriate illustrations to accompany our patient charter. In contexts of limited literacy it is possible to enable access to critical clinical governance and accountability tools.