CHE 360 Methods and Strategies for Health Education

Locate a patient-related document that is given to patients in your practice area or an area with which you are familiar. This document could be admission paperwork, health education materials, or other materials that are provided to a patient to inform them about health care decisions.

Assess the selected document using the “Checklist for Easy-to-Understand Print Materials” in this week’s Resources.

Review the checklist and determine how each area meets or does not meet the guidelines provided.

Introduction

It is both challenging and daunting task to amalgam and incorporate a wide range of healthcare information and communicating the same to a wide range of audiences. Thus, during framing and designing an effective health information material it is necessary to not to implement the one size fit all mind-set. Literacy skills and the cultural skills are the two most important factors that must be considered during framing and designing of the health related communication material and will help in catching the attention of the audience. However, it is important to note that, people that possess high literacy skills want the health related communication material to be easy to use, meaningful and easy to understand.

Assessment of pamphlet

The pamphlet (appendix) is assessed using the “Checklist for Easy-to-Understand Print Materials” (Stacks.cdc.gov, 2017).

Message content- The message is not limited to 3 or 4 messages; rather 6 to 7 sections are present. There is information like “in offering the condition H option, we want you to know that you are our partners in care” which is nice to know, although it is not necessary. The most important information regarding the contact number is not provided in the beginning of the document. The action steps and the behaviours although not present in a sequential manner, but are present.

Text appearance- the document has lots of white space and the margins are more than 1 inches. The print is large enough with fonts size 12 and are in serifs. Text boxes, bold texts are used to highlight the important information. Capital letters are avoided but texts like “CONDITION H” are found. The texts are all left aligned and there is no usage of columns with 40 to 50 characters.

Visuals- the cover is attractive to the intended audience and it includes the message for the applicable audiences and shows the audiences. The visuals are simple and informative rather than decorative. However, the visuals do not explain the messages found in the text. The visuals are placed inappropriately and they do not have any captions.

Layout and design- the information presented in the pamphlet are in an order that is logical to the audiences. The information provided are chunked under heading with no bullet points and the best part is that there is no such technical terms and jargons presented in the pamphlet. Presence of concrete nouns, short words and sentences along with active voice have made the pamphlet an effective health communication material although the style of text are in a conversational style (Stacks.cdc.gov, 2017).

Translation- the visuals are culturally appropriate and when translated to other languages are found to be fluent to the other linguistics.

Understandability- the information presented in the pamphlet are lucid and simple with no complexity and thus is both culturally and linguistically appropriate.

Health information material summary

The selected material is a pamphlet which provides information about the Condition Help which is tag lined as a helpline for the families. The information is focused on the promoting effective partnership between the families and the patients, brings the communities together and also foster safety concerns. Condition Help is an initiative that helps the families and the patients to call for an emergency medical team during an emergency situation when the needs are not met (McCawley et al., 2013).

The condition H or help can be utilized when a medical emergency occurs to a patient and the health care team is unable to identify the changes. The patient or the family if feels that there is violation of the plan of health care or if there are confusions in communication along with the health care team then the condition help can be used. Another instance where the patient feels that his concerns are not hear and met then the condition help can be used (Hueckel et al., 2012).

The condition H is a proactive initiative that increases patient satisfaction and safety, and this initiative strengthen the relationship of the patients and the families with the health care team. Condition H also empowers the patients and their families to gain access to health care and are able to communicate their emergency health problems (Bump, 2017).

The various improvements that get reflected after implementing the condition help include successful protocols, helps the hospitals to develop their own procedures and policies of health related education materials which are family response activated through the emergency healthcare teams (McCawley et al., 2013).

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that the designing of the healthcare related education material is tough depending of the differing capabilities of perception and translation of the information. The study is based on a typical pamphlet which is based on condition H (a medical emergency response team). Thus, effective designing will help both the patients and the families to respond to emergency situations aptly.

References

Bump, G. M. (2017). Condition Help: A patient-and family-initiated rapid response system. Journal of hospital medicine, 12(3).

Hueckel, R. M., Mericle, J. M., Frush, K., Martin, P. L., & Champagne, M. T. (2012). Implementation of condition help: family teaching and evaluation of family understanding. Journal of nursing care quality, 27(2), 176-181.

McCawley, B. A., Gannotta, R. J., Champagne, M. T., & Wood, K. A. (2013). Calling a “Condition H”. Nursing management, 44(12), 30-35.

Stacks.cdc.gov. (2017). Simply put; a guide for creating easy-to-understand materials. Stacks.cdc.gov. Retrieved 27 December 2017, from https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/11938