Patient edu­ca­tion through inter­ac­tive for­mats: arti­cles, quizzes, pod­casts and Insta­gram posts

In addi­tion to patient coun­sel­ing, patient edu­ca­tion is a com­mu­nica­tive strat­e­gy that is intend­ed to improve the self-con­trol abil­i­ty — i.e. the health com­pe­tence — of those affect­ed. Espe­cial­ly in the case of chron­ic dis­eases or tumor dis­eases, they help to man­age life inde­pen­dent­ly, alle­vi­ate the unfa­vor­able course of the dis­ease and play an active part in ther­a­py. Patient edu­ca­tion refers to strate­gies that impart knowl­edge and skills spe­cif­ic to health or dis­ease. The most impor­tant con­cepts include struc­tured edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams, self-man­age­ment sup­port and health literacy.

Inter­ac­tive Knowl­edge Build­ing for Health Literacy

The term “health lit­er­a­cy”, also known as health lit­er­a­cy, encom­pass­es the knowl­edge, moti­va­tion and abil­i­ty of peo­ple to find, under­stand, assess and apply rel­e­vant health infor­ma­tion in every­day life. Health lit­er­a­cy plays an impor­tant role in stay­ing healthy and over­com­ing ill­ness. In addi­tion to the patient, rel­a­tives are also addressed, who can have a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on a patient’s health lit­er­a­cy. Patients need more health lit­er­a­cy to achieve high­er lev­els of adher­ence and bet­ter out­comes through their treat­ment through participation.

Mod­ern inter­ac­tive infor­ma­tion plat­forms help to pro­mote indi­vid­ual health com­pe­tence. Low-thresh­old offers can play a cen­tral role in the trans­mis­sion of infor­ma­tion, in the train­ing of approach­es or in self-man­age­ment. Four exem­plary exam­ples of mod­ern infor­ma­tion sources are arti­cles (blog), quizzes, pod­casts and Insta­gram posts. Below you will find more detailed infor­ma­tion on the infor­ma­tion platforms.

Arti­cle (blog)

The aim of knowl­edge plat­forms such as gynäkologiewelt.de is the reli­able and under­stand­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion of health-relat­ed knowl­edge. The offer serves to pro­mote the health com­pe­tence and self-deter­mi­na­tion of read­ers. For this pur­pose, the plat­form pro­vides impor­tant infor­ma­tion on health issues, clin­i­cal pic­tures and treat­ment options based on select­ed sci­en­tif­ic and evi­dence-based sources.

Quizzes

Health quizzes are knowl­edge tests that are pri­mar­i­ly intend­ed to help you clas­si­fy your own lev­el of knowl­edge. In addi­tion, they are attrac­tive oppor­tu­ni­ties to trans­fer knowl­edge in online for­mat. Because par­tic­i­pants are usu­al­ly curi­ous about the results. One exam­ple is the blood pres­sure quiz from gesundheit.de.

Pod­casts

Wide­spread stream­ing ser­vices make it pos­si­ble to dis­sem­i­nate con­tent in pod­cast for­mat, i.e. as an audio file. Low entry hur­dles thus allow easy scal­a­bil­i­ty of indi­vid­ual mono or dia­logues and inter­views. An exam­ple of this is the pod­cast: The dig­i­tal con­sul­ta­tion hour from the Ham­burg­er Abend­blatt and Asklepios.

Insta­gram Posts

Patients spend a lot of time on the social net­work and look at posts from friends, orga­ni­za­tions or influ­encers. With almost no entry bar­ri­ers, they share expe­ri­ences, moments and tips for every sit­u­a­tion via their accounts. And they are on the move in a net­work in which those affect­ed are also locat­ed. An exam­ple of a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al Insta­gram account is @dr.sehouli.

All these sources of infor­ma­tion not only serve to impart knowl­edge, but also to pro­mote moti­va­tion and sup­port for those affect­ed. The “degree of pen­e­tra­tion” ranges from sim­ply notic­ing to inten­sive­ly deal­ing with the poten­tial con­se­quences of the ther­a­py. Ulti­mate­ly, deal­ing with an ill­ness is always a com­plex mat­ter. It is all the more impor­tant that patients are empow­ered to make self-deter­mined and well-con­sid­ered decisions.

Sources:

Bun­deszen­trale für gesund­heitliche Aufk­lärung (BZgA)
https://www.bzga.de/

Patien­te­nuni­ver­sität Han­nover
https://www.patienten-universitaet.de/

sueddeutsche.de
https://www.sueddeutsche.de

gesund.bund.de
https://gesund.bund.de/

Bun­des­ge­sund­heitsmin­is­teri­um
https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/