Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen (KSSG, now hoch Health Ostschweiz) shows how individualised patient education videos relieve everyday hospital work. It is the central hospital in Eastern Switzerland. As one of the largest hospitals in Switzerland, it provides basic care for the population of the city of St. Gallen and the neighbouring regions and also performs central hospital functions for the residents of the entire canton of St. Gallen and several neighbouring cantons.
In addition, Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen offers officially recognised training, continuing education and specialist training in all the medical disciplines it represents. It also takes part in forward-looking research projects and meets university standards in both care and quality.
Challenge: time-consuming consent discussions with little patient focus
Informing patients before a medical procedure is required by law. In a consent discussion, they receive a lot of information in a short time and then have to confirm with their signature that they have been informed about the upcoming procedure and have understood the content of the discussion. For patients, these discussions are a stressful situation. In addition, the information conveyed orally varies depending on the experience of the physician providing it. Because patient information has so far been provided on paper and often ad hoc, it has left little room for standardisation, which has been shown to be beneficial. At the same time, physicians experience these appointments as a repetitive and time-consuming task.
To improve patient information, KSSG was looking for a modern solution for standardised patient education that frees up time and staff resources.
With the medudoc platform, Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen can create individualised patient videos in a time-efficient way and make them available to patients before procedures.
Operation was tested in a pilot project with selected procedures. After its successful completion, the application was adopted into routine operation and extended to further procedures.
“The patient videos are user-friendly for the physicians and very easy to use. The feedback from patients is excellent. The video information on standardised procedures represents REAL added value and should contribute to a positive image of the hospital.”
— Dr. Thomas Steffen, Deputy Head of General, Visceral, Endocrine and Transplant Surgery, Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen
Solution: individualised information videos for standardised patient information, independent of location
To this end, KSSG first identified the most frequently performed procedures that require consent discussions. These include procedures in general surgery, neurosurgery, orthopaedics, urology and ophthalmology. medudoc then developed medical, patient-centred video content together with the physicians of these specialties.
Using medudoc’s modular platform, they can adapt the information videos to specific patient needs such as sex, indication, surgical procedure, risk profile or side of surgery.
Based on the individual patient data, physicians receive a modular video suggestion. Following a modular principle, the treating physicians can choose which modules are relevant for the consent discussion.
In this way, patients receive a video tailored individually to them that they can watch anywhere and as often as they like. This also allows relatives to be involved in the process flexibly. Any open questions are then clarified in a short personal discussion with a specialist.
Result: information videos make everyday work easier and improve patient education
The project evaluation at Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen showed the following improvements:
- Using medudoc’s digital video platform significantly increased the quality of patient education.
- The treating physicians were able to save up to 15 minutes per consent discussion.
- In total, 276 patients were informed about upcoming procedures by video as part of the pilot project. They rated the offering 4.9 out of 5 points.
- Staff resources were significantly relieved.
The standardised, digital information process raises the quality of patient education. The hospital can ensure that patients receive all the important information about an upcoming procedure, regardless of the experience of the physician providing it.
At the same time, repetitive tasks in patient education are significantly reduced. Thanks to the platform’s ease of use, creating an information video takes a few seconds, depending on the degree of individualisation.
According to the project evaluation, over 92% of the KSSG physicians involved in the pilot phase no longer want to do without it in future. The time saved gives them valuable resources for diagnostics, treatment or other administrative tasks, for example.
For its modern patient education with medudoc, KSSG also received the Quality Crystal Award in the category “Promoting patient competence in health, illness and the healthcare system”, presented by the Swiss insurer CSS.
