A new series of nutrition education videos, funded by the RBWH Foundation, is transforming the way hospital patients across Queensland learn about how and why to eat well after illness and injury.
The project was led by Surgical, Treatment and Rehabilitation Service (STARS) Dietitian researcher Hannah Olufson, in collaboration with a team of dietitian researchers, consumer researchers and clinical staff.
“Consumers felt really strongly that although hospitals have adequate written information, it was often left at a patient’s bedside or lost among other forms patients receive during their hospital journey,” said Hannah Olufson.
“They recommended a video that patients could rewatch or share with their family members.”
Pictured left:
Front row left to right: Huyen Do (Dietitian, STARS), Dr Adrienne Young (Dietitian, RBWH), Bridget Nobel (Consumer Partner), Dale Trevor (Consumer Partner), Thilini Gunawardena (Dietitian RBWH), Janette Moore (Consumer Partner)
Back row left to right: Hannah Olufson (Dietitian, STARS), Dale Trevor (Consumer Partner), Scott Harding (Consumer Partner).
With input from consumer researchers, including patients and caregivers, , the information is now being communicated in a way that’s easy to understand, relevant to patients and can be translated into different languages.
Co-design team member Bridget Noble became involved in consumer research after her husband John suffered a stroke and experienced aphasia, a language disorder that affects the ability to speak and understand what others say.
Her perspective as John’s caregiver influenced the use of simple language and graphics.
“It's been a very interesting discovery journey; we call John’s experience our ‘stroke of genius’,” said Bridget.
“It gave us purpose and gave us an opportunity to work with people to inspire them, because if you build something for aphasia, you build something for all cultures as it provides information slowly and simply.”
The topics of the three videos are Eating When it is Harder to Eat, Eating for Recovery, Health and Wellness, and Eating for Stroke Prevention. Testing revealed most patients (60%) who piloted the videos learned something new, while 27% reported that the videos reinforced their existing knowledge.
They will now be translated into the top 10 most spoken languages across Metro North.
In a Queensland-first, the videos have been integrated into the STARS bedside Patient Engagement System and have paved the way for other clinical staff to upload educational videos to the system. The series is also available on the Queensland Health Nutrition Education Materials Online (NEMO) website for statewide access.
“We're really thankful to the RBWH Foundation for funding the videos,” said Hannah. “A lot of other funding bodies fund research, whereas we wanted to translate research into practice.”
The team has shared their co-design roadmap to assist other healthcare teams to create high-quality, patient-centred education materials.
