Patient education is important for many reasons. With so much information available for public consumption, its gets tricky to understand what content on the web can really be trusted. While deciphering the right content is important for everybody, it’s especially important for physiotherapy patients.
Oftentimes, people think that they don’t need a doctor and can treat their injuries themselves, which can be dangerous. By educating your patients online you will be able to:
However, you must be careful about what kind of information you choose to serve your patients on your physical therapy clinic’s website. They don’t need to know everything, they just need to know the right things. Your general aim should be to advice and inform them, without encouraging any sort of dangerous endeavors. Here is what you need to know about educating your physiotherapy patients:
First thing you want to do before starting the education process is actually determining who your patients are. Are they educated people? What are their problems/pain points? What kind of information would they find useful? Etc. These kind of questions will give you valuable tips on how to make the education as effective as you can.
You can use your own experience to find the answers to these questions. Patients tell their doctors everything when it comes to their health issues, and most of the times, that information can be put to very good use in the form of interesting and valuable content on your clinic’s blog.
After understanding who you are talking to, you need to tell your patients as much as possible about their health problems. Generally, physiotherapists are very busy during their workday and often don’t have enough time to explain every issue to each patient in details.
Your website and blog can come very handy in this case. Explain the different cases that are most common among your patients and educate them on the essentials like pain management, the importance of involving family members into the rehabilitation process, etc.
When posting content about any exercises or best practices for your patients, ensure that everything you say can be executed safely at their homes, as that’s the most likely place they will be trying to execute them.
Also, try to explain everything in as much detail as possible. Improper exercising can lead to serious health issues and the last thing you want patients to do besides harming themselves, is to say that they read about the exercise on your blog or spread it on social media.
It may sound unusual, but many people are very poorly informed in terms of general health education. For example something as simple as performing 15-minute morning exercises is a rare practice for most patients. Teaching small, everyday stuff like that can help build trust with your clinic and inspire confidence towards you.
Nowadays, people use internet for almost everything: cooking, repairing, fixing, designing, learning, etc. Unfortunately, many of them think that the same principles can be applied to health practices as well. Nobody needs doctors anymore – patients can just find the information they need on the web, act according to instructions and treat themselves.
Explain why this is dangerous and how professional medical practitioners should not be mixed up with cooks and plumbers. One may have a lot of plumbs to fix in his house, but every person has just one organism to take care of.
On a final note, it’s important to remember the main purposes of patient education:
These are solid ways to drive more patients to your physical therapy clinic, while also help them get considerably healthier at the same time. If you need help with educating your patients, learn how PatientSites.com helps physiotherapy clinics produce educational content with detailed visuals and videos.
Get started with a Free Evergreen Marketing Blueprint to learn how you can create long-term assets that will attract new patients for years to come.