Week 9 Lecture
Health professionals use many tools to take care of patients. Some are stethoscope’s and scalpels – others are information and facts to provide valuable knowledge to their patients. This can take many forms including a pamphlet, a face to face conversation, a phone call or a list of websites that contain valuable information that is relevant to the condition of the patient.
This week’s learning is about the strategies that a provider might use to communicate with their patients in the most effective way – based on that patient, their condition and their ability to be motivated to help themselves or engage in information seeking.
Strategies for Health Professionals
Efficiency requires members of the audience to be treated amorphously and to bend tThe Best Strategy
The best strategy has been to find a match between the patient’s information seeking preferences and the providers selection of information carrier. These are often found to be in the form of social media or bi-directional communication platforms, there are many examples of that include social media, MyChart or a ‘blog’ where information is factually curated but user generated content (comments and questions) are allowed and answered. This makes the information highly ‘usable’ and increases the potential for behavioral change.
hat individuals be helped on thei s://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rwTlxAipu0, P. 85
Denial
When patients are in denial of their condition, or who refuse to seek information for fear of what they may find out, the classic old school campaigns are the only channel left (imagine a big poster in the waiting room that the patient cannot avoid looking at or commercials on tv about being active to improve both your physical and mental health).
Strategies for health providers to facilitate information seeking behavior that meets the terms of their patient include expanding the patients physical access to a variety of information fields. This may manifest itself by having an information kiosk in the waiting room. Having a dedicated phone line where patients can call in questions and speak with a nurse. It may be providing internet kiosks in the waiting room of their hospital or practice, it could even be performed by having patient support group meetings in their facility.