Health Education Film as an Assessment of Improving People's Health and Knowledge: Taking the experience of pediatricians as an example

Abstract

Background: Most of the caregivers have insufficient or wrong medical knowledge to properly look after the physical and the mental development of their children in Yunlin and Chiayi of Taiwan. As a result, delays of medical treatments for children are quite often. The medical knowledge of caregivers is closely related to the health of children. This study intended to evaluate the effectiveness of medical education videos on the general knowledge of children's caregivers by interviewing pediatricians who observed the subjects. Method: The present work is a qualitative study. The data was collected by semi-structured interviews on two male pediatricians. The first one has been a medical practitioner for 17 years, and is specialized in pediatric nephrology. The second one has been a medical practitioner for 21 years and is specialized in pediatric orthopedics. The whole interviewing process was recorded and transferred to a verbatim draft for subsequent text analysis. Results: 1. Improving communication skills of caregivers: Caregivers could gain basic knowledge of childhood diseases through the lectures in the medical education film. As a result, physicians could strive for more time to discuss more advanced issues relevant to the diseases with the caregivers. 2. Improving the health literacy of caregivers: The films could transmit correct information about childhood diseases to the general public, so that people could establish correct basic knowledge of childhood diseases, and their ignorance and myths about disease could be resolved. 3. Enhancing the spillover effect of the film: The films could increase the sensitivity of children's caregivers to their health related problems. Not only did they actively screen the problems of their own children, but also transmit relevant information to their relatives and friends in the community. Conclusions: This study found that the audio-visual medical education was more proactive than the health educational leaflet, and played a role in screening high-risk cases. In addition, the protagonist of the films was the attending physician of the patients. Hence, the films helped the physicians to establish a smooth communication and trustworthy relationship with their patients. Furthermore, after the medical knowledge of caregivers was improved, and they could assert influences to their community. Hence, they contributed to our goal of promoting a functional and interactive health knowledge in the community. Those medical education videos will be helpful used as a medium to enhance the medical knowledge of the community.