Today brings a close to a series I started a few months back, called 5 steps to improve your patient education. I promised to take a closer look at each of those 5 steps. So far I’ve written about eliciting patient background knowledge; how you handle your medical knowledge; being clear about your goals for […]
Patient Centered
What does health literacy mean to you?
A few months ago, I decided to conduct an informal survey. I’d begun thinking about the relationships between health literacy research and health care workers’ everyday practice. Since I often get to talk with physicians one-on-one, I decided to ask the next few physicians I encountered a simple question: When you hear the phrase ‘health […]
10 Ways to communicate a complex idea during patient education
If you’ve got to explain something to a patient, how do you do it? If you have important information or complex ideas to share, how do you get it all across? This is another in my series on patient education. I’ve talked about getting clear on what you’re teaching and how you’re assessing; on patient […]
Providers: your words may have more power than you realize
I was recently speaking with a woman who has Stage III ovarian cancer. We were talking about the language that gets used around cancer and other terminal diseases. She retold one conversation that stood out to her, because of her surgeon’s careful use of language: “He said, ‘Y’know it’s gonna get us in the end.’ […]
How to pivot when your patient education isn’t working
This week, I’ll start with a scary story. The clock is ticking. The spotlight is on you. You’re the person everyone wants a part of. And you’re in the middle of educating a patient on a crucial topic. But it’s going nowhere. Crickets. “The strategy I’ve been recommending for years was not working.” “I was […]
Make this one change to improve your patient education
A while ago, I wrote a piece called 5 steps to improve your patient education. I promised I would gradually dig deeper into each of the 5 steps. Last month I dove into the topic of patients’ background knowledge and how it can help you. This time, it’s about your subject matter. Your medical knowledge. […]