Page 10 - Christiana Care Focus June July 2018

The Christiana Care Way |
Educating our patients and their families in The Christiana Care Way
By Tabassum Salam, M.D., FACP, CHCQM, Medical Director, Patient and Family Health Education
As respectful, expert partners in the health of our patients, we include them in decisions about their care and work closely to help them understand how they can achieve optimal health. Each day, we do our best to provide the highest quality care and an exceptional experience to our patients. However, sometimes they leave our hospitals and offices uncertain of what to do next.
This is an all-too-common scenario:
A doctor prescribes a new medication to help Mrs. S. control her blood pressure.
The doctor spends considerable time during the appointment explaining how lifestyle adjustments and taking the medication
as prescribed can help. A nurse in the
office gives Mrs. S. printed educational materials to take home as well. She diligently stops by the pharmacy to pick
up her medication. However, once she gets home, Mrs. S. struggles to understand the dosing instructions on the bottle label. Nor can she confidently read the educational materials with their advanced vocabulary and medical terms. Unfortunately, she is too embarrassed to tell anyone — including her doctor — that she is struggling to understand. And sadly, this might mean that she will not successfully adjust her lifestyle behaviors or take her medications accurately. Simply put, Mrs. S. may not Nachieve good health.
early nine out of 10 adults lack the skills necessary to manage their health and prevent disease, according to a National
Assessment of Adult Literacy.
Many of our own patients struggle with absorbing and processing health-related information, also known as health litera- cy. These challenges are due to language, culture and acuity of illness, among other factors. Health literacy is not based on education levels or reading and writing skills. It is easy to make assumptions about education levels, so it’s important to keep in mind that just because someone has a
college degree or is a professional in their field does not mean they will easily under- stand health information. In addition, our patients are experiencing stress and can be overwhelmed by the volume of new infor- mAation and decisions to be made.
s caregivers, we need to focus on helping our patients understand the issues affecting their health and their ability to process and
apply the health-related information we share with them.
The new Patient & Family Health Education team, part of iLEAD and led by Greg O’Neill, MSN, APRN, AGCNS-BC, RN-BC, aims to improve the quality and safety of care, enhance the patient experience and reduce costs by more formally structuring and centralizing the health system’s approach to patient and family health education.
We already have been incorporating best practices around health literacy in the care of our patients. With your partnership, we are moving toward health education that is health-literate by making it integrated, personal, consistent and engaging for our patients in the ways that best serve them.
In addition, we are working to ensure that the health education materials our system provides are clear and consistent. Even with our best intentions, our patients sometimes receive inconsistent educational materials across our health system, leading to conflicting information. A more centralized process will help us use our resources wisely as we guide our patients toward optimal health.
Relationship-based care calls on us to create partnerships with our patients
and include their family members in
our conversations. Qualified medical interpreters help our patients who prefer
to communicate in languages other than English. We are growing our commitment to using the evidence-based Teach-Back Method, asking patients to explain, using their own words, any information that we have shared with them. Bedside shift report has been a great opportunity to promote health literacy; at every shift change, our nurses engage patients and families to confirm their understanding of their plans of care.
H
working with our service lines
owever, there is even more we can do. The Patient and Family Health Education team is
and partners throughout Christiana Care on a coordinated strategy to centralize our communication and health education resources. Through these efforts and our own personal dedication to best practices, we can improve the lives of those in our care.
We will be sharing more communication about our ongoing work to standardize tools and best practices across the continu- um of care and will look to you, our expert colleagues, for your feedback. Thank you for your commitment to being exceptional today and better tomorrow as we partner with our patients and their families on edu- cation — a vital component of their health — in The Christiana Care Way. 
8 CHRISTIANA CARE HEALTH SYSTEM