What do you do if your patient education materials lack creativity?

1 Assess your audience

Before you choose or create any patient education materials, you need to know who your audience is. What are their literacy levels, cultural backgrounds, learning preferences, and information needs? How can you tailor your materials to suit their goals, values, and expectations? You can use tools like the REALM-SF or the Newest Vital Sign to assess your patients' health literacy, and ask them open-ended questions to understand their perspectives and concerns. By knowing your audience, you can select or design materials that are relevant, respectful, and responsive.

2 Use plain language

One of the most common problems with patient education materials is that they use too much medical jargon, technical terms, or complex sentences. This can confuse, overwhelm, or alienate your patients, and reduce their comprehension and retention of the information. To avoid this, use plain language that is clear, concise, and easy to understand. Use simple words, short sentences, and active voice. Explain any necessary terms or acronyms, and provide examples or analogies. You can use tools like the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level or the SMOG Index to check the readability of your materials.

3 Incorporate visuals

Another way to make your patient education materials more creative and engaging is to incorporate visuals that support your message. Visuals can help your patients process, remember, and apply the information more easily, and also appeal to their emotions and motivations. You can use images, icons, graphs, charts, diagrams, or videos to illustrate your points, show steps or procedures, compare data, or demonstrate outcomes. Make sure your visuals are relevant, accurate, simple, and consistent. You can use tools like Canva, Piktochart, or Powtoon to create or edit your visuals.

5 Evaluate and revise

Finally, you need to evaluate and revise your patient education materials regularly to ensure that they are creative, effective, and up-to-date. You can use different methods to evaluate your materials, such as feedback surveys, focus groups, or usability tests. You can also use metrics like readability scores, engagement rates, or learning outcomes to measure the impact of your materials. Based on your evaluation results, you can revise your materials to improve their content, design, or delivery. You can also use tools like Hemingway, Grammarly, or Loom to edit or enhance your materials.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?