Carry the message: Portable posters good education tools
Handy signs reinforce education efforts
Print material can enhance education in many ways. Nurse educators at Craig Hospital in Englewood, CO, use traveling poster boards to inform staff about policy changes or procedures that have been updated, says Terry Chase, ND, RN, patient and family education coordinator at the nonprofit rehabilitation facility that specializes in the care, treatment, disability management, and research for patients with spinal cord or traumatic brain injury.
The portable posters are 3 feet by 5 feet, so they can be moved around from the medication room, to the nurses’ lounge to the nursing unit, explains Chase.
"The nurse educators have done a good job with color, the arrangement of information, and putting eye-catching figures on them," she says.
An outpatient nurse has begun to use the small tack boards in the exam rooms to initiate patient education by posting information on a health topic on each board. For example, one covers skin care and another covers bowel management.
"The purpose is to prompt an educational discourse between the patient and physician or nurse," says Chase.
Chase uses poster boards in her classes as well to reinforce education. For example, she took a food pyramid guide poster and put a hard backing on it so she could display it during her lessons on nutrition. She also created an 18- by 24-inch poster board on fluid intake to display during class.
"There isn’t a lot of words on the poster," says Chase. Instead, there are photos of hydrating fluids such as water, milk, orange juice, and decaffeinated soda with instructions to drink more of these types of drinks. Under the pictures of dehydrating beverages like coffee, tea, beer, and wine there are instructions to drink less of these types of beverages.
"I like to put things in a visual format because that seems to be one of the predominate learning styles," says Chase.
Print material can enhance education in many ways. Nurse educators at Craig Hospital in Englewood, CO, use traveling poster boards to inform staff about policy changes or procedures that have been updated.
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