Better Patient Visits Start With More Effective Patient Education Sheets

Start visits before you step in the room with patient information sheets for your most common appointment types.

If this were an awards show, I’d start by thanking one residency attending in particular. He shifted the way I think by asking one simple question: What could make the visit smoother before I even walked into the room?

When we talk about practice management and efficiency, we tend to focus on what happens after we have interacted with a patient. We fast-forward to the end of the visit, or even the end of the day… no matter when it is, it’s always after you’ve met with the patient.

My attending’s conclusion: create information sheets for his common consults that patients read while waiting to be seen. Wrist arthritis and carpal tunnel are a couple examples. They covered the diagnosis, causes and information on treatment options their potential risks. 

This. Is. Brilliant.

You may be thinking: “This won’t work for my practice”. Maybe it won’t…but you might be surprised. 

If you regularly see a certain type of consult or follow-up (go back to the template list for ideas), you’d be surprised of how much you have to gain by educating patients before you walk in the room.

For a clearer picture, here’s one of my information sheets:

Why Add Patient Education Resources to Your Practice

Patient information sheets could benefit you (and patients) in four big ways:

1. Improved patient education = more information retained from the visit

And we all know that a lot (actually – upwards of 50%) of the information reviewed in an average patient visit is forgotten. That number goes even higher in patients with lower education levels.

So what can we do about it? Not to make this a literature review, but there are a lot of studies that have looked into that question.

And guess what? Written instructions and information sheets have been found to significantly increase the amount of medical information that your patient recalls.

2. Patient education provides reliable information for patients to refer back to

Many (most?) patients consult Dr. Google for more information.

Here’s how patient education counteracts that. After we scan them into our EMR, our patients take their information sheet home.

This doesn’t eliminate Googling, but it gives patients at least one source of credible information that they and/or their family members can refer back to. 

3. Allows more time to engage in patient-specific factors and concerns during the visit

Let’s go back to my residency attending.

By having patients read his information sheets, it changes the course of the visit when he enters the room. He can quickly confirm that the reason for the referral was accurate and the patient’s understanding of the problem and dive right into treatment options and risks. (In the literature, this is referred to as the “teach back” method, which helps improve patient information retention even more!)

He spends less overall time describing what the diagnosis is, what causes it, risk factors, etc. And he uses that time to address his patient’s specific concerns and treatment options.

Personally – this is awesome because gives me more time to really emphasize the information that I feel is the most important (i.e. expected outcomes and potential complications of intervention options). 

4. It benefits you and your team

Creating an environment where patients remember more from their visit is absolutely better for the patient. 

But it’s also very beneficial for you.

Anecdotally, when patients have read an information sheet, I find there are way fewer questions at the end of the visit about information we’ve already talked about. This is immediately less repetitive and mentally taxing (win!). 

And this stretches into subsequent visits. Rather than reviewing the basics again, I can spend more time on the next steps or reiterating key information (double win!).

For those of us who see the same consults and follow-ups repeatedly, cutting down on extensive repetition is a big win for the brain. I don’t have data to cite here, but it genuinely feels less exhausting.

My admin has also noticed a difference. There are fewer phone calls to the office with general questions or requests to see me to ‘go over things again’ 

It’s saving all of us time and energy (and isn’t that the point?)   

How I use Patient Information Sheets in My Practice

Having drunk this Kool-Aid, I use patient information sheets for most of my most common consultations. For my practice, that includes carpal tunnel syndrome, trigger finger and Dupuytren’s Disease, to name a few.

And I haven’t stopped there. This has expanded to post-procedure information sheets that answer common incision care questions, how to take care of and what is considered ‘normal’ healing.  

While my examples are surgical, this approach applies equally to medical conditions: CHF, IBD, pediatric asthma—you name it. Patients still benefit from clear, written explanations of what the problem is, causes, treatment options and expected outcomes.

Ask yourself: Do you find yourself saying the same information over and over (possibly to the same patient)?

If so, information sheets may be most useful for your routine rechecks—DM2, hypertension, atrial fibrillation and others.

If you already use templates, you have a head start. These visits follow a familiar pattern, so the information sheet practically writes itself. 

Would an information sheet help streamline your most common visit types—or reduce the repeat questions that take up your and your admin’s time?