DESIGN OF PATIENT INSTRUCTION BROCHURE FOR THE ELDERLY ACCEPTING DIALYSIS TREATMENT
摘要：
Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is a common health problem in the world, especially in the elderly population. In Taiwan, there is also a high incident and prevalence of End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD).Thus, it is very important to educate the patients with CKD to control potential diseases, diets and lifestyle for the prevention of progression to ESRD from chronic kidney disease. However, our clinical experience has shown that education by descriptive text only is too hard for the elderly to understand and to choose a treatment mode at the right time.Therefore, our study aims to redesign a new patient instruction brochure to solve the communication problems between health education instructors and patients. At first, we used the case-study method to discuss the issues related to communication between health education instructors and patients; next, we formulated the design strategy for patient instruction brochure through literatures and focus group. In this study, we found that the issues related to communication between health education instructors and patients were: 1. Elderly patients were unable to understand the content through oral presentations of instructors. 2. Although the original brochure had images, the elderly patients couldn’t remember all the information in a short time. 3. The advantages and disadvantages of three treatment methods might confuse the elderly patients. 4. The elderly patients might misunderstand messages of the instructors. In this study, we have proposed some new design strategies for the introduction brochure: 1. The three-step health education mode in which patients ask medical staff “questions”, talk about “ideas” and make “decisions” is designed as a doctor-patient shared decision-making process. 2. Diagrams indicating advantages and disadvantages for each of the three kinds of medical treatment methods are designed to rectify the situation in which the advantages and disadvantages might make elderly patients confused. Important information such as fistula designs of hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis is presented with simplified images in order to help the elderly patients to memorize them. 3. Tables are used to compare advantages and disadvantages among the three treatment options and to indicate steps to guide the elderly patients to consider and select one of the options in accordance with their own physical conditions. 4. Images in the new patient instruction brochure have simplified shapes, simple colors, and 14-point bold fonts. We expect the new design can meet physiological and psychological demands of elderly population and solve the communication problems between health education instructors and patients.
