Keep your form from flunking
Preprinted sheets, codes document teaching
The patient education documentation form at York (PA) Health Systems flunked the pilot test on two nursing units. It was just too cumbersome to use, explains Donette Lasher, MAT, patient education coordinator at the health system. "We went back to the drawing board and streamlined the form so that it required significantly less writing," she says.
Simple forms work the best, agrees Louise Villejo, MPH, CHES, director of patient education at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. "We developed a form that would be very easy to use and would help staff remember what they had to document," she says.
Before creating the form, the patient education committee looked at the standards of the Oakbrook Terrace, IL-based Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations as well as the hospital’s current practices. Then the committee drafted a system staff could easily use to identify areas they need to cover.
Also, the committee at MD Anderson created a series of sticky labels for various disciplines that lists what is taught. For example, if teaching on chemotherapy takes place, the nurse places the label with the 10 topics to be covered during chemotherapy teaching on the form and checks them off as they are covered, explains Villejo.
One of the basic problems with documentation compliance is that many of the disciplines fail to understand the language of patient education, says Sandra Cornett, RN, PhD, program manager, consumer health education at The Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus.
"Often people don’t know the words to use; that’s why preprinting is helpful. They don’t have to think about how to word the evaluation of a person’s response. They can just put in a code," explains Cornett.
You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
- Award-winning Medical Content
- Latest Advances & Development in Medicine
- Unbiased Content