Lessons learned from using whiteboard videos and YouTube for deprescribing guidelines knowledge mobilization

Deprescribing is the planned and supervised process of dose reduction or stopping medication. Few clinical guidelines exist to help health care professionals in making decisions about deprescribing. The Bruyère Deprescribing Guidelines Team developed a series of evidence-based medication-class specific deprescribing guidelines and, to extend reach and uptake, disseminated them as whiteboard videos published on YouTube. This paper reports on the creation, sharing and evaluation of videos on proton pump inhibitor (PPI), antihyperglycemic (AHG), antipsychotic (AP) and benzodiazepine receptor agonist (BZRA) deprescribing guidelines.

Whiteboard videos depict an animator drawing on a whiteboard, while the narrator reads the script. In each video, the deprescribing algorithm is applied to mock patient cases. The videos were shared on YouTube and promoted via Twitter and other web-based tools. Evaluation methods included YouTube analytics and the validated Information Assessment Method (IAM) questionnaire.

The four videos have a combined total of 26 387 views over the approximately 50 months since publishing, with viewers watching 34-40% of the videos' runtimes on average. The PPI and AHG deprescribing videos were viewed 4318 times in 97 countries during the first year. IAM respondents perceived the PPI, AHG and AP video content to be relevant, useful to learning and applicable to patient care.

Using whiteboard videos on YouTube to explain deprescribing guidelines was a successful approach to knowledge mobilization. The evaluation approach is innovative as it combines typical success factors for online learning videos (e.g. views, estimated minutes watched) with responses to a validated information assessment tool.