Patient Education

Patient education involves providing relevant information to patients in ways that enhance their knowledge of topics related to their health. When effectively done, it can provide the patients with health literacy skills and influence their behavior in ways that can help them to better manage their health conditions and live healthy lifestyles. When patient education is appropriately delivered, this can also improve the doctor-patient relationship, build trust between them, and help the patient to make informed decisions about their own healthcare.

Patient education software can supplement the information provided by healthcare workers (who are typically quite busy) by allowing patients to interact with engaging materials that give them a better understanding of their own healthcare issues. Information provided through software can be consistently delivered and designed in ways to address all important points. Plus, quality technology like JourneyPX can be accessed wherever the patient is: in their hospital room or clinic—and it’s even available when the patient is at home through their smart device, email address, and patient portal.

Patient education technology allows patients to be active participants in their own healthcare journey, which can help them to become more committed to taking their prescriptions, following their healthcare plan, and living a more healthy lifestyle. Patient education technology can be customized to a particular patient, which allows them to receive precisely the right information at the right time for their needs at their level of health literacy in languages they are comfortable with using. Plus, it supports busy doctors and nurses, allowing them to have more informed discussions with their patients.

With JourneyPX My Stay, thousands of videos are available on demand, covering a vast amount of medical conditions and treatments. Healthcare facilities can provide exactly the right videos to patients, educating them in engaging, interactive ways. Patients can order meals based on current options available that dovetail with their nutritional needs, use relaxation tools, and more. In addition, patients and staff can view vital health-related information on a digital whiteboard solution.

With JourneyPX, healthcare facilities have access to a large video library of health-related information. Documentation can be inserted into a patient’s health record and can interface with your ADT and EHR so the solution can follow the patient through facility transfers. Information can also be emailed or texted to discharged patients at home. Topics in JourneyPX’s patient education software include pre- and post-operative education and modules about disease, wellness, and safety. You can also deliver patient satisfaction and comprehension surveys to address their overall engagement.

Patient education technology can meet patients where they are: where they are physically located and in terms of their health literacy levels. This interactive form of information delivery can help patients to better understand their health conditions and participate in their own healthcare journey as well as enhance the trust relationships with their medical providers. The National Library of Medicine notes that digital physician-patient communication “has been shown to increase patient satisfaction, promote adherence to preventative and treatment recommendations, improve clinical outcomes, and lower medical costs.”

A key benefit of JourneyPX is how healthcare facilities can streamline their clinical workflows and integrate patient education software into already existing technology like the organizations’ ADT and EHR systems of choice. This allows the healthcare organization to automate patient education in ways that support the delivery of care. To see more specifically how this works, just schedule a free, 30-minute demo of Journey PX.

Digital patient education allows healthcare facilities to provide highly targeted information to patients in their own languages and at the appropriate levels of healthcare literacy. Digital methods free up busy doctors and nurses to address urgent healthcare needs while enhancing the ability of medical professionals and patients to discuss relevant healthcare issues in more meaningful and helpful ways.

Digital patient education technology allows healthcare information to be flexibly presented around the clock, being just clicks away from being conveniently delivered. This technology allows information to be imparted in a variety of learning styles with its interactivity helping to engage patients in ways that static information simply can’t—and can allow healthcare facilities to leverage the power of a combination of digital and traditional patient education.

Absolutely! Customization is another key benefit of JourneyPX. You can deliver content that’s personalized for the patients’ needs and even customize the look and feel of patient interfaces to blend your brand throughout the patient engagement features in ways that fit your budget. You can add multiple features to engage, educate, and improve patient outcomes throughout the care continuum—and MDM has an entire healthcare team of patient educators and designers that can expertly customize your interface for you.

A key goal of patient education is to inform patients in ways that will help them to participate in their own health journeys. So, it’s crucial to impart that information in ways they can understand and absorb. To successfully accomplish this, healthcare professionals can observe how the patient learns best and analyze their current health literacy levels and belief systems; challenges, including visual or auditory impairments or language barriers; and so forth.

Empowered with this information about the patient’s learning needs and status, the medical team in charge of imparting patient education can collaborate with them to formulate goals—perhaps short term, intermediate, and long term. They can also prioritize the information to be provided, starting with the most important, and select the optimal strategy to reach goals. Keeping the intended outcomes front and center, they can then create the material.

It quickly becomes clear how time intensive this process is, which highlights the value of hospital patient education solutions such as Journey PX. You can choose what to present to the patient with the choices providing information about the relevant diagnoses, patient goals, and intended outcomes. The information will be logically organized, covering all the key points for that session’s goals to enhance health literacy.

This greatly streamlines the entire patient education process, keeping your healthcare team from continually having to reinvent the wheel and freeing them up for other urgent and important patient health care initiatives. Patient engagement software like Journey PX allows your healthcare organization to flexibly impart the appropriate levels of information using the right levels of language. It’s important to remain flexible because what’s appropriate could change based on new diagnoses or treatments—or because the patient is absorbing information more slowly or more quickly than originally anticipated.

Information included in the patient education plan can also involve family members who could benefit from a better understanding of the diagnoses, treatments, goals, and expected outcomes.

Hospital patient education solutions are designed to engage the patient in the material presented. It also allows you to get feedback and assess the patient’s understanding of the material, which may trigger the need for a modified patient education plan—perhaps including additional material.

Patient engagement software allows healthcare organizations to incorporate the teach-back method, which involves checking the levels of a patient’s understanding in their own words; this strategy is recommended by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. They note a statistic that emphasizes the importance of boosting health literacy: 40 to 80 percent of the medical information that is provided to patients during office visits is immediately forgotten; almost half of what is retained is actually incorrect. This also highlights the value of patient education software as it interactively measures a patient’s understanding of the material as the process progresses. Note that this is not intended to test the patient. Rather, it’s a way to determine if the patient’s education is being properly delivered, which can be modified.

Schedule your free Journey PX demo today!

Because JourneyPX is a cloud-based patient education technology solution, it’s easy for patients to access the information. The solution seamlessly integrates with the healthcare facilities’ already-existing WiFi infrastructure, allowing patients to access the information at their hospital bed, on their personal devices, and more. This technology can also be deployed over a hospital’s private LTE network; patients won’t need to see below the hood and understand the connectivity to interact with and benefit from its power.

Simply schedule a free, 30-minute demo of JourneyPX online! This is step one of transforming your healthcare organization through the powerful—and empowering—world of quality patient education technology.