Communicating with your patients and getting them actively involved in their health care is essential, especially in the rapidly changing health care environment.
Read examples below of ways physicians are educating their patients and engaging them in their health care:
I believe that the way to improve health care and in addition reduce costs is to educate physicians in improved patient education. Speaking to patients can be simplified by creating a group of scenarios or analogies to help a patient understand what the disease is or what the treatment involves. Physicians are not taught how to do this in medical school.
An example I have used to help patients understand hypertension:
Ask a patient if they have ever seen a hand operated water pump. Ask them to imagine that they have to pump the water pump to water a garden and need to get a certain amount of water through a garden hose in a set period of time. Next ask them what would happen if someone stepped on the hose, but they still needed to get the same amount of water through the hose. Would they have to work harder? Of course they would. Now tell them that the person pumping the water is the heart and the person stepping on the hose is hypertension. This is a very nice way to explain hypertension to a patient.
We could create many of these and use them to help educate physicians and other health care providers in speaking with patients.
Karen Arscott, DO
Director, Marywood University PA Program
Waverly
I think it is important that radiologists become more involved in direct patient care. Rather than just reporting findings electronically, I think that the radiologist should directly interact with the patient to explain findings. This way, patients will have a better understanding of their clinical diagnoses rather than hearing them second-hand from another physician who was not trained in radiology.
Sarah Kamel, Student, Jefferson Medical College
Philadelphia
Thirty percent of pediatric gastroenterology referrals are related to defecation disorders. Among defecation disorders, functional constipation is the most common disorder. Based on clinical practice guidelines published by American Academy of Pediatrics and the North American Society of Pediatric and Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, I developed a tool called "Pooping is Fun.” This is a simple, user friendly tool which helps the patient or the patient’s family to mark the key elements of functional constipation management. It helps a clinician to evaluate the patient's clinical progress at a glance.
Muhammad Azim Qureshi, MD
Pediatric Gastroenterology Associates
Carlisle
If a patient is operated in the morning, he or she gets a personal call that evening from me.
John Altobelli, MD
Altobelli Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery
Allentown
I am a surgeon and try to phone each of my surgical patients postoperatively usually after a few days to check on how they're doing. Frequently this will answer many questions that are on their minds and prevent many phone calls, and let them know how important they are to me. Most are very appreciative and will frequently mention it to me in the future.
For the past 32 years, I also have been photographing my patients and updating their pictures when necessary as a form of identification on their charts or electronic medical records.
David Rogerson, MD
ENT Associates of Johnstown