Healthcare Informatics Resources

In researching the Internet for asthma education, I came across an excellent patient education website located at http://www.asthmacure.com  that I wish to review.  I feel that it serves as a good example of what patient education can be.  A patient would need to have the ability to read and basic computer skills to utilize this education site independently.  Alternately portions of the material such as the movie could be used for children and non reading adults. 

The education begins with an overview of asthma; discussing what it is and the fundamental information one would need to understand the disease.  The next section contains a movie.  The graphics are colorful and the language easy to understand.  The movie would be suitable for children age 8 or older as well as adults.  The movie is a wonderful option for those patients who learn best visually or have limited reading skills.

The third section deals with understanding asthma’s warning signals.  To teach the concepts they use a colorful picture and concepts of a traffic light.

 The green light is described as Congrats! Stable Asthma zone; symptom free with PEFR > 80% of personal best.  There is a link explaining what PEFR is and how to measure it using a peak flow meter if the patient needs this information.

 The yellow light called the “caution zone”, discusses the signals and symptoms of asthma that indicate varying degrees of airway obstruction with a PEFR of 50-80.  The advice is to avoid triggers and to add medicines in effort to come back again in the green zone. 

The red light is the “crisis zone”.  Patients are encouraged not to delay medications and to seek medical care.  They discuss emergency signals that indicate urgent care needs.

The colorful pictures and analogy using a traffic signal, something most can relate to, as well easy to read language catch the learner’s attention while providing very valuable information.  This is an excellent example of patient education, useful to many.

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, Computer-based Patient-education program, Patient Education Counseling Asthma Healthcare Informatics

This entry was posted on May 5, 2010 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Disease Prevention, Health Promotion, Healthcare Informatics Communication, Healthcare Informatics Computers, Healthcare Informatics Education, Healthcare Informatics Internet, 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.