London expects education to be the center of care
London expects education to be the center of care
Goal: To get staff to appreciate the longterm impact
As health education specialist at Phoenix (AZ) Children's Hospital, Fran London, MS, RN, develops teaching materials to give to the families of the children admitted to the 300-bed health care facility. Over a third of the beds, 130, are in the intensive care unit.
The content for the written handouts is provided by the clinicians who work directly with patients and families. London edits the copy, lays it out, finds illustrations and sends the final version through expert and family review.
Once completed she has the written material translated into Spanish and also makes it available to practitioners.
Patient education materials are distributed through a computer network that has a folder with all the teaching materials produced in-house. There is also a list of supportive materials, such as dolls and models that can be borrowed from The Emily Center, which is the consumer health library. All the handouts can be printed from the computer.
The larger booklets are preprinted ahead of time and can be ordered from The Emily Center.
London works in The Emily Center eight hours a week in the evenings and every other weekend because its hours of operation cannot be covered by one full-time employee. In addition to directing people to the material for which they are looking staff in the consumer library search the research and literature to fill specific requests for information. This service is available to everyone in the State of Arizona at no charge.
A few extra responsibilities London has taken on is to assist the people in staff education with lessons on how to teach patients and also instruction on how to find teaching materials. She also promotes patient and family education through committee work.
London works from The Emily Center, which is a donation funded consumer library. Phoenix Children's Hospital covers the rent, cost of utilities, and supplies computers. However, the director of the center must find grant money and other donations to cover salaries, books and other costs. London reports to the director of The Emily Center.
The first person to fill the job as health education specialist, London has worked in this position for 13-years. In the past she has worked a variety of nursing jobs. With a masters degree in psychiatric mental health nursing with a specialty in pediatrics she has worked as a staff nurse in pediatrics and psychology in both inpatient and outpatient areas.
Patient education a good fit
When her husband was transferred to Arizona she took a job as a school nurse before applying at The Emily Center for the job of health education specialist.
"In school nursing I did a lot of patient education and certainly as a staff nurse I did a lot of patient education. It has always been a passion of mine and actually when I was an undergraduate I got a little work study job where I was editing teaching materials for readability. So I guess I have always been working towards this job," says London.
In a recent interview, London, who also sits on the editorial board for Patient Education Management, discussed her job, her philosophy on patient education, the challenges she has met, and the skills she has developed that helps her to do her job well. Following are the answers to the questions posed:
Question: What is your best success story?
Answer: "When I started there were not a whole lot of resources on how to do this job so I had to pull information together from whatever I could find in the literature. Out of that I determined there was a need for a book for people in jobs like me and that is why I wrote "No Time to Teach."
My best success story is that I took what I discovered, which was learning on the job, and turned it into something with which I could help people around the country know what to do."
Question: What is your area of strength?
Answer: "My strength is clarity. I can look at and understand complex medical information and know how people who don't know the words and terms and don't have an anatomical background will be able to understand it. I recognize this as a strength because it took a while to recognize other people can't do this as well."
Question: What lesson did you learn the hard way?
Answer: "Don't let technology decide what you are going to do. We were given money to develop informational kiosks and after many years of struggling with them on many levels I came to the conclusion we were not looking at a problem, determining how to solve it, and finding kiosks were the answer. Instead we were handed kiosks and said 'what can we do with these?'
From now on we will always ask 'What is the point? What are we trying to accomplish and is this the best way to accomplish it?'"
Question: What is your weakest link or greatest challenge?
Answer: "To get staff to pay attention to patient education, to actually appreciate that the longterm impact is a challenge. I think we are looking at putting out fires and doing short term things that are necessary immediately and not looking at the big picture. Patient education is really a big picture solution. I think we will have to have some changes in mindset to recognize that ultimately the success of our entire health care system will depend on the quality of our patient and family education. I believe patient education is only going to get bigger and more important in the future."
Question: What is your vision for patient education for the future?
Answer: "I can't see how patient education won't be the center of health care. It just seems to me given less funding, sicker people, and older people that we will need to focus more on patient education than ever before in order to sustain and maintain a healthy population.
Right now patient education seems in a lot of ways to be like the icing on the cake and I think it really should be the cake. People have to understand how to take care of themselves and patient education is the way to do that. I think it is the essence of health care."
Question: When trying to create and implement a new form; patient education materials; or program where do you go to get information/ideas from which to work?
Answer: "With handouts I try to find out what needs to be taught and therefore go to the clinicians to ask what they are trying to communicate to patients and why they would need to provide a reference in writing for patients to take home.
Occasionally I get asked to look at forms that are being developed and again I try to find out what the users need. When you are creating anything new it is important to find out what the users plan to do with it and why it is needed."
Source
For more information about topics discussed in this PEM profile, contact:
- Fran London, MS, RN, Health Education Specialist, The Emily Center, Phoenix Children's Hospital, 1919 East Thomas Road, Phoenix, AZ 85016-7710. Phone: (602) 546-1408. E-mail: [email protected].
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