Educating patients is one of the roles of healthcare workers among many other things they do. If you run a private facility, there are many options that you may consider to achieve this. These include the use of short videos, conducting public lectures or providing written literature. Each of these options has advantages and disadvantages. Patient education handouts are generally cheaper and more effective. Here are a few things that you should know about the handouts.
Before embarking on the project, you need to conduct research that will be aimed at helping you understand your audience better. Developing questionnaires will help you gather important information such as age, medical conditions they are being treated for, social status and so on. This will help you segment the larger group into smaller more homogeneous units. You may also use your prior experience to develop literature that addresses the frequently asked questions.
Once you get the required information about your clients, the next task is to create the text. It is the most important aspect of this exercise and should be accorded due diligence. The words chosen should be appropriate target audience. Construct short, concise sentences and avoid long explanations that may confuse the reader. The question and answer approach helps readers remember most of the information.
It is advisable that you use a professional or friendly tone depending on the type of audience that you are dealing with. If you have to discuss controversial topics, take a neutral stand. State the facts as they are and let the reader decide for themselves. You may include a list of merits and demerits associated with each of the choices to help in the decision making process.
Illustrations are important as they help in explaining a message better. Unfortunately, they may inflate the production costs significantly. Colored images are most expensive to produce and should only be used when absolutely necessary. On the flip side, they make the presentation more appealing to the eye and have been shown to improve the readability of the materials. If faced with financial constraints, choose icons as opposed to actual images.
Make sure that the materials that you choose are durable since some patients may want to refer to them from time to time. This is especially useful for persons that are being treated for chronic or recurrent illnesses. Better still, get a bit more creative and turn them into everyday items such as bookmarks and calendars (on one of the pages).
The priority should be the client and not the facility. In fact, it is recommended that at least 80% of the content be reserved for educational information. The remaining 20% may be used to promote the facility. This may be done by informing the clients how you can intervene and make their health status better. Useful information will go a long way into earning you referrals even in the absence of direct marketing.
If you want patients to be compliant to their treatment then you need to educate them on the importance of this. Let them learn about the causes, the risk factors, the management of their condition and what role they are to play. Using handouts is one of the most effective ways of doing this. It is also fairly economical.
Before embarking on the project, you need to conduct research that will be aimed at helping you understand your audience better. Developing questionnaires will help you gather important information such as age, medical conditions they are being treated for, social status and so on. This will help you segment the larger group into smaller more homogeneous units. You may also use your prior experience to develop literature that addresses the frequently asked questions.
Once you get the required information about your clients, the next task is to create the text. It is the most important aspect of this exercise and should be accorded due diligence. The words chosen should be appropriate target audience. Construct short, concise sentences and avoid long explanations that may confuse the reader. The question and answer approach helps readers remember most of the information.
It is advisable that you use a professional or friendly tone depending on the type of audience that you are dealing with. If you have to discuss controversial topics, take a neutral stand. State the facts as they are and let the reader decide for themselves. You may include a list of merits and demerits associated with each of the choices to help in the decision making process.
Illustrations are important as they help in explaining a message better. Unfortunately, they may inflate the production costs significantly. Colored images are most expensive to produce and should only be used when absolutely necessary. On the flip side, they make the presentation more appealing to the eye and have been shown to improve the readability of the materials. If faced with financial constraints, choose icons as opposed to actual images.
Make sure that the materials that you choose are durable since some patients may want to refer to them from time to time. This is especially useful for persons that are being treated for chronic or recurrent illnesses. Better still, get a bit more creative and turn them into everyday items such as bookmarks and calendars (on one of the pages).
The priority should be the client and not the facility. In fact, it is recommended that at least 80% of the content be reserved for educational information. The remaining 20% may be used to promote the facility. This may be done by informing the clients how you can intervene and make their health status better. Useful information will go a long way into earning you referrals even in the absence of direct marketing.
If you want patients to be compliant to their treatment then you need to educate them on the importance of this. Let them learn about the causes, the risk factors, the management of their condition and what role they are to play. Using handouts is one of the most effective ways of doing this. It is also fairly economical.
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If you would like to provide patient education handouts to your patients or customers, come to Vivacare. Let us show you how to create your own personalized health library when you visit us online at http://www.vivacare.com today.
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