Written Evaluation of a Patient Education Tool - Essay Example

? Written Evaluation of a Patient Education Tool The nursing profession experiences a diversified scope that aims at improving society’s well-being through strategies that may target taking direct care of patients, or encouraging and educating communities towards improved quality of life. There are, however, many applicable tools for patient education and the characteristics of each tool together with its advantages and disadvantages and the nature of the target patient or patient population are instrumental in determining suitability of a patient education tool. A patient’s age or literacy level, for example, determines effectiveness of a tool towards awareness creation. The aim of this paper is to evaluate a handout used for patient education for an adult with asthma. Introduction of the tool: Handout A hand out refers to a written material, in a print format, which is offered to an audience free of charge. It aims at communicating purposeful information to the audience and is therefore audience specific. It is a commonly applied tool in patient education and is distributed at strategic points in health care facilities. Handouts are majorly intended to create awareness, among patients, on preventive and management strategies for eliminating diseases or managing their impacts and the management aspect is very instrumental to adult patients with chronic diseases because their conditions requires effective, and for efficiency, self-reliant managerial approaches. The document, ‘Asthma’s impacts on the nation: Data from the CDC national asthma control program,’ is an example of handout that facilitates awareness on asthma, a chronic disease. The handout is authored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a national agency in the department of health in the USA. It is available in the internet but can easily be accessed in print form and disseminated to target audience such as attendants to a health care’s department of chronic diseases or in consultation rooms for asthma patients (IHS, n.d.; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.). The tool’s design incorporates graphics with colors and pictures that facilitate its effectiveness by drawing and retaining audience’s attention. It further identifies major points by isolating them in side boxes and using numerical and imagery representations to distinguish them. The handout also represents information in summarized point forms and this identifies clarity towards effective communication of the intended message. It is also relatively brief and is organized into headings. While it’s short length avoids monotony and therefore allows for audience concentration in reading the entire document, organization of information by titles that are further printed in bold identifies the tool’s content and therefore facilitate the intended educational objective for each section. The handout’s level of precision also identifies its efficiency because the bulleted points are conspicuous. The tool’s content defines asthma, and identifies symptoms, known causes, and its significance in the society. It further explores strategies for preventing and managing asthmatic conditions and risk factors. The handout further explores the scope of asthma in the society by examining level of awareness and active participation in management initiatives among children and adults (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.). Intended Audience The tool is appropriate for the adult population that is literate and is rational. Even though it is specific on a type of disease, asthma, the handout is appropriate for the entire literate population because of its significance to both those who are suffering from the chronic disease, and those who are affected by the disease. The affected population includes family members of those who suffer from this disorder and they may derive sufficient knowledge for helping asthma patients to manage their conditions effectively. The same significance applies to friends and even the society and allows for assistance to asthma patients who may suffer from acute attacks while in public places. The tool is also appropriate for the general literate population because asthma can develop at any stage of a person’s life and knowledge into its prevention is therefore important for safety from the complication. The most important population segment to which the tool is appropriate is however people who are asthmatic because of the need to manage their conditions and protect themselves from adverse effects of acute attacks (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.). Readability is one of the most significant features of the tool and identifies its effectiveness in educating the audience on asthma, its scope, and management. The tool is written in a simple language, which is free from professional jargon, and this means that any person with basic literacy competencies is able to read and understand its content. Its organization into sections and subsections and application of color and bold fonts to distinguish sections also facilitates readability through the tool. Further, precision that is implemented through summary of information into point forms, which facilitates the audience’s focus and interest on the content enhancing readability. The author’s documentation style in the tool is another aspect of its readability (Agarwal, 2010). His uniform approach to documentation features such as line spacing and alignment identifies readability features of the tool (Western Michigan University, n.d.). The handout is also free from cultural bias because it does not illustrate or criticize cultural practices in prevention and management of asthma conditions. This non-discriminative approach also eliminates possible resistance among the audience and therefore facilitates readability. The tool’s purely scientific approach identifies the chronic disease as a common problem across cultures and this indicates the tool’s applicability to all cultural orientations. The tool is therefore appropriate to a wide scope of audience and unifies different cultures in efforts towards asthma awareness and control (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.). Benefits to Practice Features and advantages of the handout and the wider scoped characteristics of handouts identify my likes for the type of tool. One of the reasons why I like the tool is its sensitivity to audience’s literacy level. Handouts are generally readable to a wider section of the public because of its features that ensures simplicity and even though a majority of the population are not very literate in medical terminology, features such application of words with few syllables, and restricting single ideas in each sentence facilitate readability and understanding of the communicated message. Restricting the number of concepts to be conveyed in a handout’s paragraph or subsection is another feature that facilitates readability, as the audience is not confused by concentrated concepts. A handout’s readability can also be enhanced by restricting the total number of concepts that it conveys and all these features are identifiable in the handout on literacy on asthma. The handout has two main concepts. The first one is the scope of the chronic disease and while the second concept is people’s initiatives for improving the conditions of the disease. Its points are also limited to few words and each bulleted point contains a single idea. The handout’s use of simple language, free from professional jargon, is another advantage and identifies my positive attitude towards the tool. I also like handout because of its compatibility with technology that allows for effectiveness among different languages. This has particularly been made possible by the ability to use internet and other applications to translate written materials from one language to another. Consequently, the handout is published in English but it can be accessed, read, and understood by audience from other languages. Outstanding design is another reason for my positive attitude towards the handout. With the tool’s general flexibility to adjust size of the applied material as well as visual aspects, the handout is designed in a size that is big enough for readability and it incorporate a number of visual tools such as pictures, numbers, and color. The features that integrate to facilitate effectiveness in the tool’s communication potentials (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.; Clark, 2013). Another benefit of the tool is its application of data as the approach establishes credibility of the offered information and facilitate the audience’s understanding. The handout can also be distributed at any time, irrespective to availability of a patient educator or care personnel. In cases of organized patient education forums, the tool can be “distributed before, during, and after” a presentation and this allows for the educators’ flexibility and creativity in using the tool (ASTD, 2008, 121). While patients may not be able to remember all aspect of the disease, as offered in an education forum, the handout offers references to its contents such as symptoms and causes and therefore ensures effectiveness of patient education objectives (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.; ASTD, 2008). Other features of the tool that developed my positive attitude towards it include reduced audience efforts in the learning process, its portability, and affordability, its suitability for different environments and its ability to offer similar information to all audience. Shifting costs and efforts from the audience allows the audience to focus on the tool’s content rather than resources for acquiring the tool and this enhances the audience’s learning potential. Portability offers advantages to both educator and the audience and allows for the use of the tool at any place and environment. The audience is also able to carry the tool through their daily routines and movement to facilitate their learning or even to enlighten other people on the tool’s content (ASTD, 2008). Disadvantages of Tool However, the tool has a number of disadvantages that should be considered also. Application of handouts may render a patient education forum ineffective because it creates a perception that the required information is already available and references can be made for awareness. This compromises objectives of education because handouts are meant to support the actual learning process. It is not the primary technique. The standard approach of the tool that identifies similar information to every member of the audience also identifies its disadvantage because people have different needs and this rigidity may not meet the diversified needs (Nancy, 2002). Issuance of handouts is also disruptive to processes through shifting the audience attention. An educator can however consider these disadvantages and distribute handouts when the audience is free, especially after an education forum or after health care activities (ASTD, 2008). Evaluation of the tool’s source The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the source of the handout. Being a government agency, its publications are based on research and are verified for validity and reliability before publication. Based on the source’s objective of promoting health standards, its tools is expected to meet standards for patient education and these identify validity of the agency. The source does not identify a specific author but a corporate authorship is also valid. The source also fails recognize its information sources but the nature of its author proves its validity Conclusion A handout is one available patient education tool. The handout that the paper reviewed was obtained from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and it had outstanding design, level of precision and quality content. The tool is applicable to adult population that is literate. It has many advantages such as organization, design, and content that I like, however, also has disadvantages such as rigidity and disruptive nature for which I dislike it for in regards to organized teaching sessions. It was retrieved from a reliable source, a government health agency’s website. Due to the overwhelming benefits of utilizing a handout as a patient education tool, within my personal practice I would find the use of such tools to assist a variety of education opportunities in a varying patient population, due to its adaptability and readability for a wide population base. References Agarwal, M. (2010). Krishna’s professional communication. New Delhi: Krishna Prakashan Media. American Society of Training Development. (2008). Instructional design & implementation: The tools for creating training program curriculum. Danvers, MA: American Society for Training and Development. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Asthma’s impact on the nation: Data from the CDC National Asthma Control Program. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved from: http://www.cdc.gov/asthma/impacts_nation/AsthmaFactSheet.pdf Clark, N. (2013). Patient education materials. Florida State University. Retrieved from: http://med.fsu.edu/userFiles/file/Patient_Ed.pdf IHS. (n.d.). Patient education handouts. Retrieved from: http://www.ihs.gov/healthcommunications/documents/toolkit/Tool15.pdf. Nancy, S. (2002). How to write and prepare training materials. Sterling, VA: Kogan Page Publishers. Western Michigan University. (n.d.). Readability do’s and don’ts. Western Michigan University. Retrieved from: http://www.wmich.edu/writing/readability. Read More