TeleVISIONS (May 1975)

Tele VISIONS /page 16 PEE Tele-health notes By Ray Popkin Cooperation stressed in healthn media the theme of ‘The Health Science Communication Team,” the major national conference on health media focused on the need for greater cooperation between the various, and often conflicting participants in this newly emerging field of health care. The joint conference of the two major associations, the Health Education Media Association and Health Sciences Communications Association (April 12-14) heard major speakers and workshops address aspects of the need for better interaction between media services personnel, instructor using health media, receiver of instruction, and the media librarian. The critical juncture seems to be the pre-production planning phase for a media package aimed at patients or r essionals: Conseque ntly, the focus of the fers needs, maith a resultant multi-disciplinary team approach for media production to meet the learner’s needs. This approach, however, runs up against the vested interests of many of the sub-groups involved in producing health media materials at hospitals, private production companies, and elsewhere in the U.S. Often media producers seem locked into certain ways of thinking about production, which do not meet the needs of audiences. Instructional personnel have difficulty in conveying this to producers. On the other hand, instructors responsible for program content have been known to hand producers long and tedious scripts that ignore the visual need of the media producer. Conference speakers also addressed the growing problem of format incompatability, and non-systematized media techniques—the problem of having four kinds of tape-slide machines, three. sizes of videotape, three kinds of film loops, two audiotape systems, and so on. This may be compounded by the desire of various producers to create his/her own series of programs without regard to system compatability. The result can be an overly large equipment capital budget, and confusion for the learner. One solution to compatability was suggest ed: transfer of all material to one format, like. videocassettes. Another might be for instructional personnel to let producers know that only a small number of formats are going to be used, thus forcing distribution into a smaller number of formats. The conference again illustrated wasteful duplication of effort in the production of the same kinds of material by hundreds of different people. Compounding this is the lack of independent evaluation of materials. Thus, whether you want a program in medical education or patient education, you must wade through literally hundreds of catalogs, preview a host of products before ever knowing what you have to choose from. One bright spot in this area is a new service called Hospital Health Care Media Profiles. This is a catalog service that provides a full page profile on each entry listed, noting the audience, a gist of the content, a synopsis of the script, a listing of related materials ' provided and a short evaluation. The weak part here is the evaluations as they are not provided by any specific independent group. All in all however this is the best resource guide we have seen to date. caNCatier tools for use in sc the . The exhibition was women’s health, with patient education coming in close behind. Each year when it looks like an area will take off a lot of commercial producers jump on the bandwagons trying to get out a product as quickly as possible with little testing and evaluation. The result was seeing a lot of women’s health materials for continuing education of questionable merit and a few well packaged patient ed series with little viewability. Media producers should realize that.the patient is a very difficult customer, who doesn’t have to watch the material to pass an exam. Folks that have bought slick packages and thrown them up on the waiting room screen have been often disappointed by the results. Listening to speakers at the patient education sessions you soon realized that it takes a lot of considered work to change a person’s behavior even if their survival ’ depends on it. The key to success in media assisted instruction, is that it be seen as an assist, and not an end in itself, for many of the presenters stated that human interaction still had to be a key element in the process. Following are some highlights of the patient and well person educated workshops. Maine Health Education Center established A total Health Education Resource Center * (HERC) has been established at the University of Maine in Farmington, with funds from the Maine Regional Medical program. The Center provides services on demand to medical groups, students, public schools, community groups, health agencies and others. These services range from the providing of preproduced videotapes and films, to the actual planning and production of new materials. Z The project lists its five goals as first the education. nu existing professionals and key f community; third to support health sey systems by designing client or patient education materials; fourth to provide consultant services for the planning and design of health education projects, to health related community agencies and fifth to develop health education personnel and courses for the University of Maine. When the HERC staff undertakes a project they see it through from the very beginning to the actual viewing. They will visit a class with a teacher to assess the audience, plan with the teacher the best media product to mee‘ the need, produce the media, develop con. dle mentary printed materials, and then t old workshops for other teachers on the use of he media package. In other cases they help groups get publicity for projects and they are even helping to organize a health fair. Dr. Peter Doran, Chairman of the Health Science Department at Farmington stressed over and over the importance of close human involvements with the clients of the center. All efforts are made to give the users of the service leadership in the design and implementation of projects with the staffers serving as facilitators. It is also important to note that the project has on staff both a health educator and an education media specialist as well as a writer, media technician, graphic artist, and student interns. The only problem is that the demand for services has been so great that there is a two-to-four-month wait for new projects. Dial-a-Health program spreads to 35 U.S. cities In 1973 the San Diego County Medical Society in cooperation with a host of health groups and associations installed two twenty-line telephone systems with a tape deck on each line to handle public questions about health problems. When someone calls in, a bi-lingual operator answers the phone and answers the party’s request for information by playing one of the 125 short audio tapes over the line. Since the inception of the project the system has been deluged with a higher volume of calls than it can handle and this success has led to the spread of the idea to 35 other cities. “in” thing this year at the media ° ing and care of teeth. The service is publicized through 2 pamphlet containing a. complete list of the tapes which is distributed by doctors and dentists as well as clinics. Health consumers are told that the library is designed to, ‘‘help you remain healthy by giving preventive health information, help you recognize early signs of illness, and to help you adjust to serious illness.” In its development stage the staffers of the project met with every health organization they could, to involve them in production of their own tapes. The Heart Association would be responsible for tapes on heart disease, the Dental Society tapes on dental hygeine, etc. Other groups such as the public schools, P.T.A., Hospital Association, Colleges, and municipal health agencies were also involved. The result is an extremely great amount of variety in tapes. While the producers of these tapes will make many of them available to other localities, they are reluctant, since they believe each city should produce its own tapes with a local flavor and the address and directions for getting to the agency that can handle the particular problem. In addition to the subject areas you would expect such as heart, cancer, V.D., cigarette smoking, and birth control, there are many unusual subject areas with a wide variety of tapes in each area. Here is a sampling of some tapes in various categories. Children: ‘‘Teen Years—The Age of Rebellion,” ‘“‘When a New Baby Creates Jealousy,” ‘‘Poisons in the Home.”’ Women: “Abortion,” ‘‘Vaginitis,” “Femse Hygeine Products, Can They Harm See Information: ‘‘Medi-Cal,” ‘“Medi ‘ care,” “State Disability Insurance,” “What You Should Know in Case Of: “Bleeding,” “Shock;”’ ‘Heart Attack.” General: ‘“‘Cockroaches, Menace or Nuisance,’ “Emotional Experiences of the Dying Person,” “Laxatives, Use Them Rarely If Ever.” Other headings are, rights of the nonsmoker, safety, common problems, drug abuse, alcoholism, care of the patient at home, pregnancy, diseases that affect breath Te Sa NY AY PAV SS @ j Indiana wahied TV networks is test-bed for patient education In February patients at five hospitals across the state of Indiana were able to tune into the first televised patient education network for hospital patients in this country. With the encouragement and backing of Wells Communications, the Medical Education Resource Project (MERP), of Indiana University Hospital linked the hospital room television systems of five hospitals with its statewide Medical Microwave system which had previously been reserved for Medical education. Through the system a series of five one-hour education programs are being broadcast, one each day throughout the week, with most hospitals having two show times so that more patients could view the programs. In September, 1974, Wells approached _MERP through its marketing consultants to participate in this experiment so an evaluation could be done of the patient education network concept. Following screenings of the doctor, thus he believes that prescription programs a team of 50 interviewers questioned patients as to whether or not they had seen ‘the programs, and tested for the retention of key pieces of information in different subject jareas. During the first two months of ‘transmission, almost 2,000 patients were interviewed, data was compiled and in April a ‘study was released by Wells. Although it | might seem that this time span is a little ‘short for a highly accurate evaluation and idoes not allow time for long-time retention itesting, the results do provide enough information to know that such efforts are worthwhile. , One-third viewed shows A third of the patients viewed at least one show, with over half watching two or more shows. Many of those who stated that they did not watch were prevented from doing so by reason of illness, or being out of the room. The average number of points recalled varied from 25 to 35 % depending on the topics with some patients retaining up to 70% of the information. While this is not as high as you might hope, these figures are about average for programs without repetition or person-toperson reinforcement. Almost all of the patients who viewed the material liked and wanted to continue receiving the material. Nurses were also queried as to what they perceived as the results of the project. Almost fifty per-cent felt that the programs aided patient-staff communications and seventy percent favored increased use of television for patient education. One of the main problems encountered in Indiana and also reported in the several individual hospitals that have conducted similar experiments such as Pen-T.V. in Ohio, is getting patients to turn the \programming on instead of the regular program fare offered by broadcast TV. In an effort to build audience, well designed program guides were given to all the patients and reminder cards were placed on food trays. Dr. Elmer Friman, director of MERP, stated that many patients said they would have watched if they were instructed to by their i ble gan. Blue Cross covers patient ed. This is an interesting point because Blue — Cross has recently announced that prescribed patient education is now a reimbursible expense covered by their insurance policy. _ This being the case, the cost to the hospital of ‘a patient education system could be covered _ by the insurance industry. On the other hand it might discourage hospitals from transmit ting a large volume of general information, as it would be hard to delineate what should be charged for. Instead, there might be systems of the type installed in hotels that can monitor what is being viewed and adding a per program charge to the final bill. No doubt Wells, which has equipment in 650 hospitals is keenly aware of this situation and is conducting these tests to determine the . best marketing strategy for such services. Hopefully a way will be found to maintain open viewing, with perhaps across the board per-patient charge for the video with individual charges for the additional person to person follow up instruction which will be necessary. If this were to be the case patients could be instructed to watch what they need at the time, but could also have the option of picking up additional information. Another way to meet the insurance company criteria for prescribed programming, and still provide other information, is to run several related topics grouped together. In the current programming schedule offered by MERP, the four or five segments in each program are often unrelated. Many viewers would watch only one short segment and turn it off if the subject was irrelevant. If programs each presented information on different topics but each related to a certain type of health client, vewiers would be liable to stay tuned. For example, if a patient was asked to watch a tape on stroke and it was featured in an hour that had another segment on diet, and another on the problems of aging and one on arthritis, the patient would get the prescribed information and would get extra information as well. If on the other hand the second segment was on baby care the patient would turn it off. Thus information could be grouped by areas of age or sex or other considerations., Hospital administrators need not feel that this will be left up to the program producers. It can be very easily be negotiated by the continued on next page