How do I improve patient education in my organization?

It’s a new year, and you’re ready for a change. Perhaps you think now is the time take steps to improve patient and family education in your organization.

Why? Your patient population is low on resources, or lacks health literacy skills, or don’t speak English, and you want to better accommodate their needs. Your patient satisfaction scores may be showing your patient education services need improvement. Your readmission rate or your emergency department visits may reflect your patients’ inability or unwillingness to apply the information you provided. Perhaps you’re thinking about the future, health care reform, and the demands of meaningful use. There are many reasons you may be motivated to improve the patient education you provide.

Where do you start?

The key is to build the infrastructure that supports quality patient and family education from every angle, then train and hold folks accountable.

Here are some essential pieces:

Job descriptions: Is the expectation of provision of patient education in your job descriptions?

Policies and procedures: Have you clearly defined the who, when, and what to teach? Have you defined the appropriate and unacceptable sources of teaching tools? (Not everything on the Internet is valid and reliable.)

Teaching skills: Have you measured the competency of your staff to provide patient education? Do they know what needs to be taught, and what is only nice to know? Do they have the skills of identifying teachable moments, assessing learning needs, individualizing teaching, and evaluating understanding? Do they know how to assess self-efficacy and how to respond? Have they demonstrated competency using teach back?

Documentation: Is your documentation system for patient education interdisciplinary, easy to use, and does it share meaningful information?

Teaching tools: Are teaching tools, like handouts and videos, standardized throughout the organization and easily accessible? Are they appropriate for your patient population? Are they appropriate for the services you provide? How are you using technology?

Interpreters: Does your staff have easy access to language interpreters, for teaching patients who are deaf or don’t speak English?

Physical environment: Is the environment conducive to conversation, quiet and lacking distractions?

Accountability: Do you hold staff accountable for the provision of quality patient education?

Coaching: Do you provide follow-up calls? Do you reassess at subsequent visits? Are you offering resources for continuing support and adherence?

Sustainability: How are you maintaining the gains? Do you recognize and reward the provision of quality patient and family education? Do you continually monitor implementation of the pieces you have put in place? Do you communicate the status of patient education to continuing care providers?

Measure outcomes: What do you want to change by improving patient education, and how will you measure it? Measure this before and after your interventions.

A lot to think about. A lot to tweak. But worth it. The provision of quality patient and family education does not cost a lot of money, but offers great returns in quality of care, health outcomes, and relationships. It’s the “helping people” part of health care; the reason many of us choose the profession.

© 2012, Fran London, MS, RN