What is the purpose of ...

Recently, someone posted the question on the LinkedIn site: “What is the purpose of patient education in hospitals? . . . I’m not sure how it fits into the hospitals business model. Is there an economic basis for it?” Some business-oriented administrators who are...

Health care communicati...

The Partnership for Clear Health Communication is encouraging patients to ask their doctors, nurses, and pharmacists these three questions: What is my main problem? What do I need to do? Why is it important to do this? You can read details of the Ask Me 3 program at http://www.npsf.org/askme3/for_patients.php They...

Using Pictographs and P...

Recently Joint Commission released Advancing Effective Communication, Cultural Competence, and Patient- and Family-Centered Care: A Roadmap for Hospitals (2010). This monograph offers recommendations to help hospitals address unique patient needs, meet the new patient-centered communication...

Free – Joint Comm...

Current evidence on how to most effectively teach patients and families is the basis of both the Joint Commission standards and the advice in No Time to Teach: The Essence of Patient and Family Education for Health Care Providers. So I am pleased to announce Joint Commission is...

Using social media for ...

One group of patients have poorer health outcomes because of socio-economic disparities and low functional health literacy. In response, health care providers are actively learning the skills to reach and help them, by providing clearly written handouts, asking them to teach back...

Evidence-based ways to ...

A great deal of patient education content is now focusing on the treatment of obesity. Nutrition has been in the forefront for years, with good fats and bad fats, good carbs and bad carbs, antioxidants and anti-inflammatories. But weight loss depends on burning more calories than...

Helping heart failure p...

A recent qualitative study from the University of Groningen Medical Center (in The Netherlands) looked for reasons for and barriers to compliance with the self-care plan. Their conclusions: “To improve compliance in HF [heart failure] patients, patient-tailored interventions...

What do stage 3 chronic...

Every once in a while, a study is published asking a group of patients what they would like to learn more about. The results almost always differ from what the health care professionals are teaching. Another study of this sort has been published by Lewis, Stabler, and Welch (2010)....

How to share health inf...

Are you planning to share health information on a website? Lots of people and organizations do. But how much do users get out of them? Functional health literacy, as well as the challenges of technology, can make it difficult for users to get what they need. Fortunately, there’s...

Let’s get rid of disc...

I’m wondering if we should even use the term “discharge teaching” any more. That implies we teach at discharge. Clearly, that’s the wrong time to teach – staff don’t have time, and patients just want to leave the hospital. Besides, the content of the education isn’t...