Patient Teaching Methods

Nurses, physicians and other health care providers teach patients as a part of providing treatment and care for many health conditions. Because these providers are limited in the time to teach patients, high-quality resources assist this process. Providers commonly use patient teaching resources that include online, print and media materials.

Online

• Many large medical practices and centers offer websites with patient teaching resources. These include information meant for the patient and the health care provider. The Oregon Health & Science University offers a website directed at clinicians. This website includes translation and interpreter services for patients who speak no or limited English. Staff at the university review online submissions of patient teaching materials to ensure they are understandable at a low reading level and are culturally sensitive. Many trusted websites, including the National Library of Medicine at nlm.nih.gov, provide resources geared toward the patient and the provider. This site contains interactive images, diagrams and text that describe thousands of health conditions and information about how the body works.

Print

• Printed patient teaching resources are available through many organizations and are produced for members of a health care team as well as for the patients. For providers, quarterly newsletters such as "Patient Educator," published by the University of Washington Medical Center, keep clinicians updated on resources produced by their own organization as well as national organizations such as The Joint Commission. Many universities, including Ohio State and Washington, offer in-house patient education materials reviews and health literacy evaluations. These are conducted by staff trained in communications techniques and intended to increase the readability of the materials. Printed materials including frequently asked questions and fact sheets, pamphlets, brochures and books that pass evaluation are distributed to patients upon discharge.

Media

• Some doctor's offices and hospitals use media resources to teach patients. Waiting rooms and patient rooms equipped with televisions and DVD players play educational videos on a variety of topics. Health care providers with closed-circuit television networks use this resource to show educational health videos. Wired.md provides a library of more than 400 closed-circuit television videos in multiple languages for use on in-room hospital television systems. The patient chooses these videos on demand, or the nurse or physician selects them and remains in the room to teach the patient. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration offers multimedia resources for teaching patients and for a variety of health care consumers. These include videos, slide shows, podcats and audio presentations (patienteducationupdate.com).