Education key to dispelling health care’s many myths
Education key to dispelling health care’s many myths
Clarify study interpretation and work with staff
One way to dispel myths consumers have about health care is to make sure that the staff who work with patients are educated on the topics that cause confusion, says Eileen Murray, RN, BSN, a neonatal educator at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Egleston Campus.
Each month in employee publications and on flyers that are posted throughout the hospital, she works on dispelling misconceptions about pain management in children by printing a myth followed by the facts that dispel it. For example, many people do not know that there are data that show that when a baby’s pain is not managed, he or she could have long-term developmental problems.
"It’s important to educate staff so that they can tell parents because they are the ones that have the relationship with parents," says Murray.
Parents are given handouts about their children’s rights, which include the right to pain management. In this material, they are told that there are ways to manage pain that are safe and that won’t cause addiction or long-term problems, says Murray. Yet it is the staff that must address their fears, she explains.
Misconceptions about health care often are created by media reports on research studies and clinical trials, says Mary Szczepanik, MS, BSN, RN, manager of cancer education, support and outreach at Grant/Riverside Methodist Hospitals in Columbus, OH.
"Something I teach when I do community education programs is how to evaluate what you read in the media or see on TV," she says.
When consumers read an article or see a news clip about a research study or clinical trial, they need to note where the information came from so that they might get a copy. The smart consumer reads the study to find out the population, the study size, the methodology used in the study, its purpose or what the researchers were trying to prove, and how they reported their findings, says Szczepanik. If the people in the study were age 25 and the consumer is age 65, then it is a different population.
Health care professionals need to be prepared to answer questions people might have about medical information that is being reported by the media, she says. "We have to accept the fact that people are getting information from a variety of sources and ask them what they have been reading," she says.
In addition, health care organizations need to evaluate web sites and provide consumers with criteria on how they can evaluate them as well. "We should only recommend sites that are evidence-based and not opinion- or trend-based," says Szczepanik.
Create good outreach strategies
In some instances, it is good to try for a broad dissemination of information, similar to the outreach education strategies of national health observance months such as American Heart Month in February, says Virginia Forbes, MSN, RNC, program director of patient and family education at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. However, this type of public awareness needs to start at a much more basic level such as the schools, she says.
Health care organizations can collaborate with schools, the community, and organizations to make sure people have access to current information and understand it. A good example of such collaboration is NOAH: New York Online Access to Health (www.noah-health.org). It was established in 1994 when four New York City library organizations got together to create a web site with reliable consumer health information.
Yet a more basic step would be to make sure that providers understand how to teach patients and understand what their needs are, says Forbes. All health care providers need to know how to provide information to patients in a way that they can understand, she says.
"It’s important that we educate, educate, educate all we can," concludes Murray.
One way to dispel myths consumers have about health care is to make sure that the staff who work with patients are educated on the topics that cause confusion, says Eileen Murray, RN, BSN, a neonatal educator at Childrens Healthcare of Atlanta, Egleston Campus.Subscribe Now for Access
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