Helping Patients Help Themselves

This post is written by Alicia Philippou.

Alicia is a Health Navigator at Smart Chicago Collaborative.

Click, click, click.'Not all doctors are alike-" Hmm, those animations could come in a bit sooner to fit with the audio. Let's fix that. Click, click, click. Perfect! Okay, time to export the video. Several hours later... time to watch it, fingers crossed it came out well, let's press play.

"Welcome to the General Medicine Clinic at Fantus Health Center, your Patient Centered Medical Home…" Seventeen minutes later and the realization dawns on me that, this time, finally, my partner and I have managed to perfect our video. It is over and it is beautiful! Weeks of work, frustrations, problems, and solutions have all come to a head in this moment and it is exhilarating!

These are some of the sensations I felt after finishing the video for the General Medicine Clinic at Fantus Health Center. As a Health Navigator placed at this site through the Smart Chicago Collaborative, I had been prepared to help patients enroll in the patient portal and answer questions about computers. But, this video project, which teaches patients about utilizing the clinic's resources and introduces them to their healthcare professionals was a surprise. It was though, a wonderful surprise, as it was a project in which I learned an immense amount: from technical computer skills, to information about the affordable care act, to the best processes to use to teach patients of all literacy levels.

While this was an informative process for me, my main concern has been whether the product is informative to the patients themselves. Maybe the patients would not pay attention to the movie, or maybe the information was not given clearly and concisely. Fortunately, patients have approached me with questions about signing up for the patient portal and diabetes classes after watching the video which lets me know that all that hard work is in fact getting good information to people. The doctors and nurses love it too, because they are now asked for their autographs as they are now TV stars!

This is how I have helped my host site reach and affect change in people's health. While I am not reaching out to people outside of my immediate clinic, I have spent my time this year dedicated to helping those who are already within the Cook County system get as much out of it as easily as they can. Along with the video my teammate and I have created and implemented an orientation course that we give to new patients to welcome them and teach them about the clinic. This has been both exciting and rewarding experience and we hope that we get to make everyone's lives a little easier once everyone understands the way the clinic runs. It helps to avoid frustration and wasted time on both the patient and clinician end and helps to form a more trusting relationship between the two parties. The patient-provider relationship is one that is very delicate and important to cultivate and I'm incredibly happy to play a part in helping it grow.