It is estimated that 65% of the population are visual learners. With that in mind, a team of cardiac nurses in a large academic tertiary hospital developed a quality improvement project to hopefully improve patient engagement as well the patients’ perception that the nurses explained things in a manner that they could understand.
Baseline patient survey scores for the question, “Nurses Explained Things In A Way That I Understand”, were under the 75thpercentile for a period of 9 months. A root cause analysis was conducted and it demonstrated numerous reasons for this score.
Several countermeasures were instituted to include the use of I Pads for patient education. In conjunction with the hospital IT specialists, cardiac educational materials were developed and videos chosen for I Pad use. A daily KPI was established to track progress of their i Pad usage goal.
Follow-up survey results demonstrated significant improvement post I Pad implementation to the question “Nurses Explained Things In A Way That I Understand”. Next steps include further education of nursing staff on educating patients in the use of I Pads as well as adding other cardiovascular educational materials
