Engaging Patients and Families

Includes resources for shared decisionmaking, health literacy, and self-management

Shared Decision Making

• SHARE, A 5-Step Process for Shared Decision Making includes exploring and comparing the benefits, harms, and risks of each option through meaningful dialogue about what matters most to the patient. The SHARE Approach Tools are a collection of references guides, posters, and other resources, all designed to support implementation of SHARE.
• Effective Health Care Program: Offers comparative effectiveness reviews and research reports into short, easy-to-read summaries for clinicians and consumers.
• Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT) is a systematic method to evaluate and compare the understandability and actionability of print and audiovisual patient education materials.

Health Literacy

• AHRQ provides dozens of Health Literacy tools that can help health care systems learn how to make health information easier to understand and improve patient education, engagement, and experiences. These toolkits help adult and pediatric practices reduce the complexity of health care, increase patient understanding of health information, and enhance support for patients of all health literacy levels. Also available is a crosswalk showing how implementing health literacy tools can help meet standards for patient-centered medical home certification or recognition.

Self-Managment

• How to Create a Pill Card helps users create an easy-to-use "pill card" for anyone who has a hard time keeping track of their medicines. Step-by-step instructions, sample clip art, and suggestions for design and use will help to customize a reminder card.
• Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT): is a systematic method to evaluate and compare the understandability and actionability of print and audiovisual patient education materials.
• Self-Management Support Resource Library and Videos: were developed to help primary care team members learn about self-management support and develop their self-management support skills in working with chronically ill patients. Videos address the what, why, and how of self-management support to help practices improve this important aspect of comprehensive primary care. There is also the ability to earn recertification credit: Patient Self-Management Support of Chronic Conditions: Framework for Clinicians Seeking Recertification Credit (MOC Part IV & PI-CME).