Tracking materials is an effective tool
It shows what's available, what's being used
Whether a hospital has a computer-based system for creating patient education documents or uses pre-printed pamphlets, developing an effective tracking system can improve access to the materials by quickly showing what is available, what is being used, and what needs to be reordered.
A system for tracking patient education materials can be sophisticated or simple, depending on the resources of the individual hospital; but it can be a crucial factor for discharge planners faced with providing information to patients whose lengths of stay are increasingly brief.
Rita Smith, MSN, RN, patient education coordinator at Mercy Center for Health Care Services in Aurora, IL, developed a system that is fairly simple but has increased use of her facility's education materials by at least 25%, she says.
The hospital's education materials used to be kept on racks in a large storage room. Care providers who needed materials would order them through the computer, and a runner would bring the booklet to the appropriate floor, Smith says.
"The problem is that, with re-engineering and downsizing, there are not as many staff [in materials management], especially on weekends and evenings, and the materials weren't getting to the floors fast enough," she says. "The patient would go home before the materials arrived."
The hospital also needed the storage area for other purposes, Smith says.
All pamphlets kept in binder
Under the new system, each patient care unit has a three-ring binder with all the pamphlets available for that area, divided by diagnosis. Extra copies appropriate for that unit are stored in hard plastic containers that resemble one-drawer file cabinets. The cardiac unit, for example, stores the pamphlets on heart disease. The binder also has a master list of other materials available, divided into categories such as cancer, diabetes, and respiratory disease, and where those materials are located.
"For instance, if we had a patient going home on the third floor, which is oncology or ortho-neuro, but that patient also has a broken hip or is diabetic, the nurse knows where to get that material," Smith says. The master list highlights the booklets that are available in Spanish.
She estimates the hospital has between 300 and 350 different pamphlets, which are stored in about 10 different areas. One unit has an education room, another stores the materials in its conference room , Smith says.
A patient education liaison on each floor takes a monthly inventory and sends the order for pamphlets to Smith. She goes to each unit every two months to see if stock is being ordered and used. "If a pamphlet is not being used, I use up the stock we have and I don't reorder," she says.
More materials are being used with the new method, in place for about a year, because in the past, nurses knew how much time it took to get the materials up from the storage area -- and could not wait that long -- or just did not want to take the time to go to the computer and order, Smith says. Nurses also have told her that before, they often forgot what materials were available, she says.
"Now they just go to the file cabinet, where each category is color-coded, and take the pamphlet they need," she adds. "When they look at the file, it brings [a certain pamphlet] to mind, and they might say, 'Oh, that would be good for Mr. Jones.' They can browse through the materials and see what is appropriate." *
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