Rheumatologists are always welcome to share ideas for new topics to cover on the site, says Senkbeil.
There’s also solid, easy-to-follow information from the Arthritis Foundation, says Dr. Schumacher.
He also believes it would be useful to explore ways to use social media to answer patients’ clinical questions and provide reliable answers from rheumatologists.
Although other resources for patient education materials are available online, they must be considered with caution.
“There is much misinformation on the Internet, and we spend many a visit reviewing that and correcting patients’ understanding of the issues at hand,” says Gilbert Gelfand, MD, CareMore, Cerritos, Calif.
“The Internet can be challenging for patients [as they try] to synthesize the information,” says Dr. Rhee. “Physicians play an important role in translating information and applying it to a patient’s individual situation.”
If you use material created by another source, make sure to review it closely before distribution to identify parts that are most relevant to your practice. For example, Dr. Schumacher has come across material about gout that focuses on the diagnosis and epidemiology—but what he really needs to convey to patients is that they need to take medications indefinitely and that their uric acid level will be checked regularly.
If there are certain parts of the material you want patients to focus on, highlight and underline or circle them, says health literacy educator Jann Keenan, Ed.S., president, The Keenan Group Inc., Ellicott City, Md. Put the patient’s name at the top, and encourage them to keep the paper where they keep other important, frequently reviewed papers.
Reinforcement of your practice’s written materials with nurses or other staff members is also crucial. “It’s important to make sure the patient reads and understands the material that you’re giving,” Dr. Schumacher said. However, many patients don’t want to seem in the dark in front of their doctors, so they’ll act like they understand. Interventions, such as a nurse calling a patient every month after discharge from the hospital or at some other regular interval period will clarify what patients think they should be doing vs. what they are actually doing.
Creating Your Own Materials
There still may be times when you need to create your own education materials for patients, perhaps due to unique needs among your patient population or information gaps you just can’t seem to bridge online.
When that’s the case, there are a number of resources online that provide further guidelines and suggestions (see sidebar).
