Web Alert

Site offers handouts for your patients

Site: Clinical and Patient Education Department at the Medical University at South Carolina
Address: www.musc.edu/medcenter/education/cpeducation (click on "education materials")

If you’re like most ED nurses, you’re always on the lookout for good patient handouts. This site, affiliated with the Medical University at South Carolina Medical Center (MUSC) in Charleston, offers you over 250 patient education handouts. Topics such as "stroke" or "pain" can be entered as keyword search terms, or you can access a list of topics.

It’s not enough to have good handouts — you also need to make sure patients can read what you give them, stresses Karen Rankine, RN, MN, coordinator of patient/family education for MUSC. All materials are at the sixth- to eighth-grade reading levels, and each has the specific reading grade level listed (evaluated by Prose: The Readability Analyst, manufactured by MicroBrothers Software in Boulder, CO), she says. The site can help you to develop a packet of information on a particular diagnosis, such as asthma or stroke, says Rankine.

If you want to obtain national guidelines, the site features links to national organizations such as the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Elk Grove Village, IL-based American Academy of Pediatrics. Materials are geared toward patients as well as health care providers, so the site is also helpful for consumers who want to learn more about their condition, Rankine notes.

Source

For more information, contact: Karen Rankine, RN, MN, Clinical and Patient Education Department, Medical University of South Carolina, P.O. Box 250337, 169 Ashley Ave., Room 742, North Tower, Charleston, SC 29425. Telephone: (843) 792-5078. Fax: (843) 792-5972. To contribute your own patient education materials to the site, send an e-mail to: hammersa@musc.edu.