Bridging the Gap: Understanding Patient and Clinician Preferences When Designing Preoperative Education Programs

Traditionally, health information has been created from the perspective of the providers with minimum patient consultation, hindering engagement and adherence. The rate of shoulder replacements has increased over the past decade, is associated with shorter hospital stays, and patients are relying on education to be able to participate in shared decision-making. Therefore, to ensure creation of accessible education programs for shoulder replacement procedures, we explored patient and clinician preferences regarding content and device choices for a preoperative shoulder replacement education program.

This study used an interpretive descriptive qualitative approach to understand patient and clinician preferences. We included a subset of patient and healthcare provider perspectives, from those who had previously completed our quantitative survey. Interviews were conducted in English by one researcher. Analysis was conducted through a descriptive thematic analysis with open coding.

A total of 10 patients and 9 healthcare providers were interviewed. Findings were categorized into four main themes described the process of creating patient education material (1) methods of accessing information, (2) deciding on educational content, (3) deciding on device use, and the last theme of factors affecting engagement can be further divided as (4-1) promotors of engagement and (4-2) barriers of engagement.

A multimodal program of a website with videos and a written booklet, that covers basic information regarding the surgery, timelines for recovery, sling use, use of therapeutic devices/aids post-surgery, patient expectations to improve surgery satisfaction, postoperative restrictions, pain management, rehabilitation and home supports is desired by both patients and clinicians.