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 […]
Patient Education
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 […]
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 […]
2 ways to improve your medical metaphors
A physician was talking with me about an article I wrote on metaphors, a few months ago. He agreed it was a hot topic, and an important one to stop and take time to consider: “Metaphors and analogies are something we do casually, without much thought,” he said. “Sometimes the metaphor did not give the […]
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. […]