Educating Patients and an Air Travel Analogy
Educating patients is key to supporting their best recovery. That’s a well-established fact with healthcare providers today. But how are you educating patients? What methods are most effective?
An analogy on how digital content supports better health recovery relates to airline travel prior to 2007. This may help to illustrate the importance of health education.
How many of you remember watching flight attendants going over spoken pre-flight safety instructions? Now, how many of you felt confident enough afterward to be able to recite those instructions to a group of strangers? Most likely the answer was, “I can’t.” Before 2007, pre-flight safety instructions were spoken, with a printed card for passengers to “follow along.” Then in 2007, Virgin Airlines introduced their first pre-flight safety video, and comprehension and understanding of the safety instructions soared.
Now Translate That to the Healthcare Setting
With patient education, put yourself in the position of a patient in an unfamiliar environment with spoken and printed instructions, and ask them to recite their disease specifications, medication, treatments, proper recovery strategy and discharge instructions. No doubt it would be difficult, if not impossible for them to remember everything accurately.
Digital Patent Education is More Effective
According to the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, “Researchers have found that showing patients an educational video about their condition teaches them the facts about their disease even better than when their doctor tells them about the condition.” Patient education has become paramount to the successful recovery of a patient, and goes far beyond just receiving the proper prescriptions. It’s been found that a patient is 30% less likely to be readmitted to the hospital once they receive digital video instructions on how to manage their care and the proper procedures to follow in their post-discharge recovery.
Explaining complex medical terminology in a simple, precise manner not only helps patients understand their condition and treatments, but avoids instances of misguided self-treatment and failure to follow treatment or medication guidelines.
Digital patient education channels allow providers to empower patients with better health literacy. It can help reduce patient misconceptions about doctors prescribing them unnecessary procedures or questioning their treatment and discharge plans. Digital content in educating patients reduces readmissions and the resulting penalties.
Educating Patients with Age-Appropriate, Easy to Understand Content by Award-Winning and Authoritative Voices
HCI patient education content is filled with rich illustrations and simple explanations delivered in an empathetic tone of voice, so all patients, even those with language or comprehension challenges, feel informed about their condition and medication adherence is higher. Several language options for content are available.
By pairing digital video education with your existing patient education program, patients feel empowered to participate in shared decision-making about their care.
Interactive Patient Care Automates and Measures Patient Education
Through HCI Interactive Patient Care solutions, staff can easily prescribe educational videos to a patient’s in-room interactive television through the Interactive Patient Whiteboard and Interactive Unit Whiteboard at a centrally located Interactive Unit Whiteboard. If an ADT integration system is in place in the facility, educational content is automatically populated on the digital whiteboards, and can be prescribed based upon diagnosis code. Educational content can be pushed directly to a patient’s television from the Interactive Patient Whiteboard and play immediately, even if the TV is off. Reminders to complete education can be sent from the electronic whiteboards, with comprehension and completion rates measured through MediaCare.
Schedule a virtual demo of HCI’s solutions to learn how we help reduce readmissions with better patient literacy.