Patient Education
Patient education is a process by which the health professionals (doctors / nurse / care taking staff / pharma companies) educate patients about the disease and its associated knowledge:
- Symptoms related with disease
- How to diagnose a disease
- Understand various methods to manage the disease
- Identify the gap in which you are operating to assess the knowledge / awareness about the disease and therapy in which you are operating
- Educating patient family about the disease and many more ways
How to go about it?
- It has to be about PATIENT & THEIR FAMILY
- KNOW YOUR PATIENT– Interact with the patients , understand their concern , their issues , who are the people they trust when they are diagnosed with a disease, Which symptom prompted the first visit to the doctor , what is their lifestyle , what is their knowledge about the disease and its treatment and so on
- Once you KNOW YOUR PATIENT you can prepare a PATIENT PERSONAL JOURNEY MAP
- This PATIENT PERSONAL JOURNEY MAP will help you to identify
Priority wise TOUCH POINTS
TOUCH POINTS are the points where you target your communication. It is not only about the posters , it is about sensitizing the patient about the disease and how to overcome it using all the TOUCH POINTS
- Patients should not be treated as commodities / objects : BE SENSITIVE
- Communicate withEMPATHYand GENUINNESS
- COMMUNICATEwith patients by ENGAGING them by taking help of doctors who will act as great influencer and advocates for the cause
- COMMUNICATION has to be simple and in regional language
- Avoid marketing jargons
- EDUCATE YOUR FIELD PEOPLEabout patient education – Why it is important and how to conduct it .This will ensure that sales team will be involved during the campaigns to drive patient education
Some of the examples are:
- Smart / Wifi Clincs
- Smart pads for disease explanation
- Patient handouts
PLEASE NOTE :
I am a learner, still learning from the industry and people across hierarchy , verticals , industry and walks of life
This is written with an aim to share what i have acquired from the learned people of the industry
Everyone is open to add to this :)
