Do you ever feel like a broken record, explaining the same topics, the same way, over and over? Or maybe you sense that the way you’re explaining complex concepts, during patient education, isn’t having the impact you’d like. This infographic is for you. It’s about: different ways to get your message across. easy alternatives for […]
Patient Education
12 Reflective practice prompts for health professionals
[This post available as a podcast episode here.] I have heard “reflective practice” mentioned a few times, in the years I have been talking with physicians, medical educators, and public health professionals. Dr. Tasha Wyatt, of the Educational Innovation Institute at the Medical College of Georgia, explained to me: “Physicians are trained–very much so–to gather […]
Two things to remember before you educate your next patient
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 […]
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 […]
Do your assessments measure what matters?
It’s the time of year when we like to look back, and look forward. We set goals. We assess where we’ve been, where we are, where we’d like to be. But in health care, assessment and evaluation has a decidedly harder edge. One nurse manager in a physician practice told me, in passing, “I’m kind […]
Laser-focus your patient education efforts with this one question
Many physicians have talked with me about improving their patient education. This makes sense; it’s a topic tightly woven together with patient communication and health literacy. So, several months ago I wrote “5 steps to improve your patient education.” It’s a quick fly-over of many educational strategies. I promised I would gradually dive deeper into […]