The value of education for patient outcomes

Patient education at the core

So, we know that nursing education positively impacts patient outcomes, but what about patient education? At the core of health care reform is the call to have educated patients interacting with responsive health care teams. For education to be successful, patients need to be engaged to understand the benefits of health education. Research shows that when patients are engaged in their health care, there are significant improvements in health outcomes, patient safety, and health care quality. Moreover, patient engagement also leads to lower health care costs.

What is patient engagement? Patient engagement combines the patient’s ability, knowledge, skills, and willingness with interventions that are designed to increase positive patient behavior – behavior that ultimately improves health and patient outcomes.

In the past, patient education consisted of discharge planning and limited print materials distributed by nursing staff. Since that time, patient education has advanced significantly with the advent of interactive patient engagement solutions. New information technology (IT) solutions are used not only to improve patient education concerning their conditions and encourage greater involvement in care decisions, but to inform patients about community health programs, address health literacy challenges, provide communication access with health care team members, support treatment strategies, and support individualized discharge planning. New IT solutions are also being used to educate patients about ways to change health behaviors and take better care of themselves. For example, fitness apps are used to measure the amount of exercise a patient gets each day. Nutrition apps help patients track their nutrition. Special devices track trends in heart rate and blood pressure.

Interactive technologies allow health care facilities to educate patients about items such as advanced directives, nutrition, chronic care, and safety equipment. For example, patients can log into the system to order their meals and learn about their dietary restrictions at the same time. Patients can also access multi-cultural health libraries that contain educational videos about their conditions.