Efficacy of Educational Presentations in the Pediatric Orthopaedics Clinic

The patient education process is an important part of healthcare, and tools including handouts, videos, and webpage suggestions have been used to aid this process. Although educational slide presentations are commonly used for teaching in academic settings and have been used in certain specialty clinics, their use for educating families and improving the shared decision-making process has, to our knowledge, not been described in the orthopaedic surgery clinic.

(1) How effective were educational PowerPoint presentations in the pediatric orthopaedics clinic as assessed by scores on a validated shared decision-making scale? (2) What were the families' preferred ways of learning about healthcare conditions?

This prospective case series was conducted at an outpatient pediatric orthopaedic surgery clinic. Between May 2024 to January 2025, all new patients whose clinic visit was the initial visit for a single problem received an educational PowerPoint presentation specific to their diagnosis, delivered by the senior author (EDS) from a laptop. These presentations were developed for the top 10 most common diagnoses seen in the pediatric orthopaedic clinic. The presentation took on average 4 minutes to complete and outlined details of the diagnosis, natural history of the condition, treatment plan, and answers to frequently asked questions. Fifty-six patients with mean ± age of 11 ± 5 years were included in this study. The most common condition was scoliosis (52% [29 of 56]). After the clinic visit, the parents or guardians were given the Shared Medical Decision Making Satisfaction Scale, a validated tool that assessed their understanding of the diagnosis, ability to participate in shared decision-making, and perception of the visit. This survey included nine questions scored 1 to 5 or "not applicable" for a maximum score of 45. Higher scores indicated better understanding of the diagnosis and treatment options. Parents or guardians also ranked their preferred ways of learning from a list of four options, with options including educational presentation, verbal explanation, handout, or webpage suggestion. They were asked to draw from past experiences with the different modalities to compare to their experience with the provided educational PowerPoint. Fifty-six families completed the Shared Medical Decision Making Satisfaction Survey; 71% (40) of those families completed the ranking of preferred ways of learning, while the others left it blank for unknown reasons. A chi-square goodness-of-fit test was performed to determine which method of learning was preferred among parents or guardians.

Parents or guardians of the children treated generally gave the educational tool (the brief PowerPoint presentation about the child's condition) very high scores on the Shared Medical Decision Making Satisfaction Scale (mean ± SD 43 ± 4 of a possible 45 points, with higher scores representing the perception of a more engaging and satisfying process). Mean scores on all of the subscales of that tool exceeded 4.5 of a possible 5 points. When asked to compare their experience with the educational PowerPoint presentation to earlier experiences with verbal explanations, printed handouts, or web-based resources, the presentation was the preferred mode of receiving information; 60% (24 of 40) ranked this as the preferred approach, compared with verbal explanation (23% [9 of 40]), webpage suggestion (10% [4 of 40]), and printed materials (8% [3 of 40]) (p < 0.001).

Educational PowerPoint presentations seemed useful in delivering information to patients and families and in the facilitating of the shared decision-making process. Creating presentations for every diagnosis encountered in clinic is not feasible; however, presentations for the most common diagnoses may help to create a more effective practice. Further studies are warranted to investigate which slides are most effective, which healthcare information is best conveyed over PowerPoint for each diagnosis, and how reading level affects the ability of patients to understand the presentations.

Level IV, therapeutic study.