Empower and engage with patient education videos

October is Health Literacy Month, and each year, it shines a light on improving not only the patient’s health knowledge but also on activating healthier behaviors. As providers strive to enhance the quality of the care they deliver, patient education can make it easier for patients to understand and actively manage their health. 

While health care organizations and providers often use print education to boost patient understanding and engagement, they should keep in mind that half of American adults without a high school education have below basic health literacy skills—and even high school and college graduates can have limited health literacy. Of those adults with below basic levels of health literacy, 43% rarely use written information—far less than those at higher health literacy levels. Below, we explore the benefits of video patient education, tips for choosing the right patient education videos, and how to use video patient education. 

Five benefits of video patient education 

Adding video to print patient education can make it easier for providers to bridge patient health literacy while supporting different learning styles. Health education videos for patients can: 

1. Help providers explain complex medical topics and procedures to patients. 
2. Increase patient knowledge and understanding by as much as 38%. Showing videos to patients speeds comprehension and creates an opportunity for the patient to “teach back” to show understanding. 
3. Help overcome barriers associated with low health literacy skills. WebMD Ignite videos cover health conditions, medical tests, and procedures in a variety of languages and include closed captioning to help serve patients who have trouble hearing. 
4. Help patients feel better prepared for surgery. Pre-procedural video-based patient education can reduce anxieties by up to 22%.¹ 
5. Improve patient experience. The better patients understand their conditions and treatment options, the more satisfied they are with the care they receive. Research shows video education delivers impactful results. 

Five tips for choosing the right patient education videos 

With so many medical videos for patients on the market, providers can be sure those they choose are the best fit for their patients and organization when the videos are: 

1. Easy to use for providers, patients, and caregivers. 
2. Written to a 5th to 6th grade reading level with multiple titles available in various languages. 
3. Able to feature closed captioning for the hearing impaired. 
4. URAC-accredited. 
5. Able to be shared via portal, along with printed transcripts and images. 

WebMD Ignite sample video on Allergic Asthma 

How to use video patient education 

Video patient education can be used to complement—and even strengthen—your patient care conversations. The best way to leverage videos is to incorporate them into your organization’s existing clinical workflows. 

Our library of video patient education is built to support your quality and compliance initiatives and offered in targeted solutions that can be easily integrated into established workflows through a variety of platforms. 

Covering 25 therapeutic areas, our video patient education is also offered in a variety of styles including patient stories, expert testimony, medical illustrations, activation, animation, and scenic nature. All content is designed to navigate a condition or procedure from initial discussion or diagnosis through treatment, discharge, rehabilitation, and recovery.

References

1. Crabtree TD, Puri V, Bell JM, Bontumasi N, Patterson GA, Kreisel D, Krupnick AS, Meyers BF. Outcomes and perception of lung surgery with implementation of a patient video education module. J Am Coll Surg. 2012 May. Epub 2012 Mar 28.