A theory-based practice guide for creating patient education - Clinical guidelines often recommend providing supplemental education to patients. However, there is limited evidence to support this recommendation, nor is there implementation guidance. Existing patient education interventions have been shown to impact outcomes such as knowledge, medication adherence, and satisfaction with care, but few have been associated with improvements in clinical outcomes such as mortality or preventable adverse drug events. Effective learning strategies grounded in established learning theories are available but are rarely incorporated into patient education tools. No guideline for developing patient education tools currently exists that utilizes best educational practices and is evidence based, widely available, and easily implementable across health care settings. The long-term goal of this proposal is to support my development as an independent investigator specializing in developing effective patient educational and shared decision making (SDM) tools that support optimal patient-clinician interactions and meaningful clinical outcomes. The overall objective of this study is to create and test a practice guide for developing patient education tools grounded in educational theory. The central hypothesis of this proposal is that patient education tools based on effective learning strategies will be more effective than tools that are not. The specific aims of this proposal are to 1) create an evidence- based practice guide for developing patient education; 2) design a new patient education tool for patients receiving anticoagulant therapy using this practice guide; and 3) pilot test the feasibility of incorporating a patient education tool and testing it within a randomized controlled trial. Aim 1 will utilize clinical guideline creation methodology to identify evidence-based learning techniques and theories to guide creation of the aforementioned practice guide. A web-based education tool for anticoagulation therapy patient education will be developed in Aim 2 using the practice guide, supported by inclusive user-based design. Finally, the education tool will be piloted tested in Aim 3 in order to prepare for a randomized control trial. This career development award will be mentored by leaders in education and anticoagulation research including: Dr. Daniel Witt, a leader in anticoagulation therapy, Dr. Angela Fagerlin, a leader in Shared Decision Making, Dr. Kirsten Butcher, an expert in educational technology and user-based design, Drs. Geoffrey Barnes and Mark Crowther, international leaders in anticoagulation research, and Dr. Thomas Delate, an expert in statistics and health research. Combined with my mentoring team, this training program will provide skills in 1) clinical guideline methodology, 2) inclusive instructional and user-based design, 3) randomized controlled trial conduction, and 4) leadership skills and grantsmanship. In summary, this project will create an evidence-based practice guide for developing patient education tools as well as lay the groundwork for a randomized controlled trial for evaluating patient education interventions.
