Thursday, 1 December 2016

How To Write Patient Handouts

By Mary Gibson


Physical exercise is important in promoting recovery from some types of illness. The doctor may thus recommend a list of physical exercises, commonly termed as physical therapy to promote the recovery. The recovery plan is then printed out in Patient Handouts to help guide them in carrying out the activities. A common guide used is the Home Exercise Program (HEP). Details on how to write the plan is include herein.

For the plan to work as expected, it should guide the patients accurately through all the exercises that they need to do. To achieve this, accuracy and details should be highly considered when including the physical therapy procedures. For example, the plan should include the exact position to carry out an exercise as well as the time taken or the number of repetitions needed for the exercise.

Ensuring the plan is written in a clear and organized structure is also essential in writing the plan. The plan should thus contain a step by step guide to help the patients change exercise procedures as well as how to carry out an exercise. This will make it easier for the clients to fully acquire the benefits of the physical therapy.

In some exercises, the written text may fail to fully elaborate the exercise. For such cases of complex procedures, the use of diagrams is important. The use of pictures in explaining the task is also encouraged. However, the diagrams and pictures are not only used to explain the point but also supplements the written texts.

The text is also a necessary factor considered when writing the handout. It is important to have the text as clear and legible as possible to allow reading by any person although they may have a vision deficit problem. Ensuring that all fonts used in the handout are over the size 12 is necessary for ensuring that the text is clear and legible.

As for the language in the plan, the information should be explained in a manner that is easy to understand and comprehend. This is necessary for ensuring that the procedures are understood by all types of patients even children. The plan should also be written in an informal writing style aimed at making the readers feel as if the writer is talking to them on a personal level.

In most cases, some patients will fail to fully complete their physical therapy if the exercises involved are too hard and complex to carry out. Often this is due to discouragement after repeatedly failing or getting tired from the exercises. The writer of the plan should thus ensure that the exercises that the person is expected to do are simple and light to encourage patients to complete the therapy.

Although the plan may contain all the details of the therapy, it is still essential that the doctor explains the physical therapy procedure verbally. This improves the patients understanding of the therapy to avoid making mistakes. The verbal conversation is also aimed at encouraging the patients to ensure that they strictly follow the routine which increases their rate of recovery. Take the above details into consideration and you shall make the most out of the handouts.




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