Materials tailored to individual
Interactivity helps patients apply lessons to self
To determine what type of patient education materials to use for their asthma management program, staff at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, did extensive benchmarking across the country to find out what other large health care systems were using.
"We didn’t find anything that looked like what we wanted, nor did we find anything printed by pharmaceutical companies that fit our criteria, which included interactivity. We wanted the materials to have something for the patient to do," says Roberta Eis, RN, BSN, MBA, project manager at Henry Ford. Therefore, many of the materials were created in-house.
Staff created an interactive workbook to be used in the class called Peak Performance. They also developed the Asthma Checkbook, which is patterned after a bank checkbook, so adults could easily record readings from their peak flow meter, and a "traffic light" zone sheet that serves as a prescription of care for the patient. A comparable zone sheet and peak flow record book called a "Bear" ometer was created for children. (See examples of the zone sheet, checkbook, and "Bear" ometer p. 135 and in the educational insert.)
Staff were able to find appropriate workbooks for the pediatric asthma management program from the Asthma & Allergy Foundation of America based in Washington, DC. They use the You Can Control Asthma workbooks with one designed for families and one for children.
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