Prepare an effective patient education packet

Don’t reinvent the wheel

In designing an education packet to send to your congestive heart failure (CHF) patients, Monica Miyaji, BSN, quality improvement coordinator at Columbia San Jose (CA) Medical Center, recommends the following:

• Vary your method of delivery. Use written and video materials that present information in different ways.

• Offer general health information that goes beyond the disease, since most CHF patients suffer from a variety of conditions.

• Don’t reinvent the wheel. Don’t spend your time developing materials; good ones already exist.

• Make sure the materials are written on a patient level and customized to your patient population. For example, do you need materials in another language?

• Measure your patients’ knowledge before and after implementation.