Krames StayWell Blog

Helping Patients and Staff with Patient Education

There is little argument that quality patient education resources help patients in many ways.   My definition of “quality” includes such attributes as patient-centric, application of health literacy design principles, behavior-oriented, and, of course, scientific accuracy.   When implemented as part of the patient education process,  you can see increases in patient satifsfaction, reductions in avoidable readmissions, and better outcomes.   But there is another important benefit – staff efficiency.                            
We recently surveyed caregivers across the country in an attempt to quantify the impact patient education resources had on workflow.  The results were quite interesting.  Here is some of what we learned:

• On average, a nurse will spend 3 hours and 20 minutes a day with every patient
• Of that time, approx. one third or 1 hour and 20 minutes a day is spent educating  patients
• Of the education time, 40% is spent reviewing patient education materials with patients/families.
• On average, nurses believe  that quality education materials will save them almost an hour in streamlining the entire education  process over the course of a hospital stay which equates to about $26 in cost savings per patient

Considering the escalating costs of care coupled with the accelerating nursing shortage, the relatively small investment in education resources – in print and digital – can deliver a high return for your organization.

Click on the following link to download a copy of our Research Brief on this topic and good luck with your education programs.