Patients learn to succeed through empowerment
Instill belief that patient can master skills
The patient learning center at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison focuses on patient empowerment and self-efficiency to ensure educational outcomes are successful. The teaching programs empower patients and family members by involving them in care and care decisions. The programs also help to instill in them a belief that they will be able to master a particular skill and gain the appropriate knowledge.
Those two components have been a successful formula for the learning center located among the inpatient units of the hospital. Staff know the formula works because they have been conducting an ongoing series of research studies since the center opened in 1995.
"People talk about learning centers being such a grand idea, but nobody has really done much to see if they are making a difference," says Zeena Engelke, RN, MS, senior clinical nurse specialist for patient and family education at the medical center.
To make sure the learning center is making a difference, staff conducted research studies on several of the teaching programs, including orthopedic pre-op teaching, inpatient pre-op teaching, cardiac surgery pre-op teaching, diabetes skills teaching, post-transplantation teaching, and most recently, general diabetes teaching.
"We are looking at the same components throughout to see whether or not we are making a difference in terms of the patient’s view of empowerment and self-efficacy as well as the patient outcome itself," says Engelke.
To gather the information, patients are asked to complete a survey tool before teaching and again prior to discharge. Chart reviews also are conducted. Several weeks after hospitalization, study participants are interviewed over the telephone. Generally, the same or similar questions are asked via a written tool or phone interview before initial teaching, after teaching, at discharge, and several weeks after hospitalization.
Patients receiving the traditional teaching within the clinic and on the inpatient units are the control group, while the patients participating in the new teaching program in the learning center are the experimental group.
"We did the orthopedic study in 1995-96 and were able to demonstrate that there were higher levels of empowerment and self-efficacy for the patients that were seen in the learning center," says Engelke.
Results from the other studies are not yet available.
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