The Best in Patient ED: Start Your Own Library

Abstract

Patient educators often must struggle with allotting staff time to research, write, and obtain approval for printed patient ed materials. The time crunch, in turn, delays production of enough materials to establish effective teaching programs on a wide range of topics. A second, quite different problem faces those educators who have the necessary printed resources, but who have no system to distribute them. Two hospitals have solved these quandaries by establishing systems that make start-up patient education libraries available to other agencies for a modest investment. The Medical Center of Beaver County, Pennsylvania, a 500-bed acute care hospital, serves patients in the Pittsburgh area. Since early 1983 the Education and Research Department has developed 123 instruction sheets, eight meal planning booklets, five special diet and 50 medicine sheets, a pediatric coloring book, and a marvelous Sweet Treats cookbook of dessert recipes for calorie-restricted diets. The content, developed by nurses, physicians, dietitians, pharmacists, and other technical specialists, is written in a clear, direct style at an eighthto