How Do Patients Prefer to Receive Patient Education Material about Treatment, Diagnosis and Procedures?
—A Survey Study of Patients Preferences Regarding Forms of Patient Education Materials; Leaflets, Podcasts, and Video ()
ABSTRACT
Aim: The aim of this study was to explore patients’ preferences for forms of patient education material, including leaflets, podcasts, and videos; that is, to determine what forms of information, besides that provided verbally by healthcare personnel, do patients prefer following visits to hospital? Methods: The study was a mixed-methods study, using a survey design with primarily quantitative items but with a qualitative component. A survey was distributed to patients over 18 years between May and July 2020 and 480 patients chose to respond. Results: Text-based patient education materials (leaflets), is the form that patients have the most experience with and was preferred by 86.46% of respondents; however, 50.21% and 31.67% of respondents would also like to receive patient education material in video and podcast formats, respectively. Furthermore, several respondents wrote about the need for different forms of patient education material, depending on the subject of the supplementary information. Conclusion: This study provides an overview of patient preferences regarding forms of patient education material. The results show that the majority of respondents prefer to use combinations of written, audio, and video material, thus applying and co-constructing a multimodal communication system, from which they select and apply different modes of communication from different sources simultaneously.