Patient Education = Too Much Reading
When you work in pharma communications and cannot email, blog or write you are pretty much dead in the water. In August I got Lyme Disease and for about a month lost the ability to read, yet still consider myself lucky. From hallucinatory fever to diagnosis I sped along at a zippy clip of just four weeks. That included a full Saturday in the overflowing halls of a New York emergency room spent staring at my sneakers (shown right)
There’s little doubt that the U.S. health care system is truly broken. If you are lucky enough to work in health care then you already know enough to rocket your way through the system. You can find appropriate treatment faster than the next person. But what about everyone else? When you cannot advocate your own medical needs you are left to rely upon the kindness of strangers.
7 Things You Can Do To Reach Non-Readers
I found information gathering frustrating as a new “non-reader.” Blurred vision and headaches drove me to seek out information in both audio and video format. Good patient education that didn’t rely upon reading tiny type was hard to come by.
Modern learning theory shows us that there are also visual, auditory and kinetic learners well represented in the general population. So why not reach out to multiple patient populations in media that makes sense for their mileu? Here’s a list of 7 ideas to jump your own thinking:
- Search on the disease state or condition that your brand treats. What kind of information appears in the results? If you were a newly diagnosed patient, would you know where to click next?
- Compare your text to image ratio. Some patients are readers, some prefer video, while others like to listen. How well is your message represented across multiple media? Are you overly reliant upon the written word? Are you balancing learning styles?
- Search for video that explains the disease state. Was what you found actually relevant? Scary, huh?
- Ask a trusted friend to go on an “information treasure hunt” through your publicly available online materials looking for specific information Ask them how easy or how difficult it was to find the targeted information.
- Lurk on a site like Patients Like Me for an hour or two. Ask yourself “what are the predominant emotions expressed by these patients?” Is your messaging addressing those feelings?
- Leverage existing assets. If you’ve got patient education that’s already approved by Regulatory Affairs – patient starter kits with DVDs for example – consider putting them online.
- If all else fails, make a list of your videos and pass it on to your SEO agency. Video trumps text. Put it to work for your brand.
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