Awards elevate materials to best practice’ level
Raise stature of patient education
Do you have a patient education video, pamphlet, or program produced in-house that has award-winning potential? If so, you may want to enter it in a contest.
"An award brings visibility to my program at the medical center. It validates that what we are doing is at a high level of quality," says Carol Maller, RN, MS, CHES, patient education coordinator at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center in Albuquerque, NM.
When the Oakbrook Terrace, IL-based Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) comes to survey, Maller routinely uses any awards, recognition, and publications to showcase the patient education program. "It allows us to reference an external review of excellence or best practice, and JCAHO seems to like that very much," says Maller. Top management likes it as well. To showcase the awards, she creates storyboards, displays trophies, and mounts certificates. "I do anything I can to promote our accomplishments," she says.
Winning an award has many benefits, agrees Jackie A. Smith, PhD, patient education coordinator at the University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics in Salt Lake City. An award brings recognition to the institution and staff that produced the material. It makes patient education more valuable in employees’ eyes and they are more likely to use it. Also, it provides incentive for staff to continue to produce top-quality materials. "Overall, the quality of patient education practice is improved," says Smith.
If you want to sell the patient education materials to other institutions, award recognition helps promote sales, says Christine Style, coordinator of audiovisual/television services at Egleston-Scottish Rite Children’s Healthcare System in Atlanta. The Basics of Asthma video, which won a Certificate of Excellence at the Health Science Communications Association 1995 media festival, is sold through Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin’s Maxishare catalog.
The External Fixator: What to Expect won Best of Show at the American Society for Healthcare Education and Training’s 1996 film festival. The physical therapist at Egleston-Scottish Rite frequently shows the film at speaking engagements and takes orders for the film at that time. "Having won an award is a good way to help sell videos," says Style. (To learn how to find contests and for information on several ongoing competitions, see article on p. 104.)
If the judges provide feedback on the video, pamphlet, or program that is entered in the contest, the information can be invaluable because it helps you improve on the next project, says Style. Also, awards are personally beneficial, she says. They indicate that you are good at what you do. Often, just being able to say you collaborated on an award-winning video helps during job performance evaluations.
While the recognition from awards is beneficial to patient education, unless you have an unlimited budget, you’ll want to enter contests with care because most have entry fees associated with them.
"It is very hard to get my institution to fund contest entries on the hope that they will win an award. My budget is solely for direct care, patient education materials, things that go in the hands of the patients," says Maller. At times, Maller has personally paid the entry fee. Therefore, she chooses entries with care.
What makes patient education materials potential award winners? Materials that are a collaborative effort, especially if they have been part of a pilot study, usually are strong entries, says Maller. "They tend to be the projects that were longer in design and have the different quality improvement pieces built in. They are not projects that happen overnight, but have been carefully planned," she explains. These well-planned projects will have evaluation data further validating that the product is of high caliber.
While the piece must be of high quality to make it worthy of an award, other factors that help measure its potential include whether or not the patients like it, if it has met the needs of its target audience, and if positive outcomes resulted from its use, says Smith. (For information on positioning contest entries to win, see article on p. 103.)
Timeliness is a key criterion to consider, according to Maller. The video Eating for a Healthy Heart, produced by the VA Medical Center in Albuquerque, won three awards because it was produced when the nation’s medical community first began widely advocating a healthier lifestyle. People were learning to read food labels and see the link between heart disease and lifestyle choices.
One of the best ways to determine if patient education materials are award-worthy is to listen to your customers, advises Maller. Eavesdrop on staff conversations in the hallway or elevators and listen to the patients. "Your customers will tell you when you are right on the mark. If people keep telling you the piece is great, or you keep running out of it, you have to know you did something well," says Maller.
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