Healthcare Informatics Resources

Chapter 3 of the text, The Practice of Patient Education, A Case Study Approach discusses evaluation in patient education.  The text provides many excellent concepts and tools for the health educator to draw upon when evaluating the effectiveness of the education for the learner.  The importance of evaluating patient education programs cannot be underestimated.  The goals of improving patient outcomes must be evident for education programs to continue exist. 

Certified programs that provide patient education for management of diseases such as diabetes and COPD must collect and document extensive data on an ongoing basis.  The data is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the program based on the outcomes of the patient over time.  Quality patient data is required for maintaining programs and recertification’s. If the objectives of the program are not met and demonstrated by improved outcomes, the program may not be re-certified.  Certified patient education programs, such as Outpatient Diabetes Education, are often required by Medicare and Insurances in order to be paid for the education.  The incentive for effective teaching is patient outcomes oriented, in part, so that the program can financially sustain itself.

The use of data collection tools and electronic tracking of outcomes is now the standard of practice.  There are many tools available to assist with data collection.  While browsing the intranet I came across the Stanford Patient Education Website, http://patienteducation.stanford.edu/research/.  It contains several patient evaluation tools that, due to a grant, are available for use by interested persons.  Tools for evaluating education regarding diabetes and COPD programs are available in English and in Spanish.  This resource could be very valuable to patient educators who are interested in either validating the tools they currently use or developing others to assess the effectiveness of their patient education.

Health Promotion/Disease Prevention Online Class

Patient Education & Counseling Online Class

Health Care Informatics Online Certificate Program

Tags: Healthcare Informatics, Healthcare Informatics Resources, Health Care Informatics Communication, Health Care Informatics References, Health Care Informatics Internet, Health Promotion/Disease Prevention Online Class, Patient Education & Counseling Online Class, Health Care Informatics Online Certificate Program, Healthcare Informatics Internet, Electronic Tracking of Outcomes

This entry was posted on April 12, 2010 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Disease Prevention, Health Promotion, Healthcare Informatics Communication, Healthcare Informatics Computers, Healthcare Informatics Education, Healthcare Informatics Internet, Nursing Education, Patient Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.