Article Text
Abstract
Background Over recent decades, CT scans have become routinely available and are used in both acute medical and outpatient environments. However, there is a small increase in the risk of adverse consequences, including an increase in the risk of both malignancy and cataracts. Clinicians are often unaware of these facts, and this represents a challenge for medical educators in England, where almost 5 million CT scans are done annually. New whiteboard methodologies permit development of innovative educational tools that are efficient and scalable in communicating simple educational messages that promote patient safety.
Methods A short educational whiteboard cartoon was developed to explore the prior observation that adolescents under the care of paediatricians had a much lower risk of receiving a CT scan than those under the care of clinicians who care for adults. This explored the risks after receiving a CT scan and strategies that can be used to avoid them. The educational cartoon was piloted on new doctors who were attending induction training at a busy teaching hospital.
Results The main output was the educational whiteboard cartoon itself. Before the new medical trainees’ induction, 56% (25/45) had received no formal training in radiation awareness, and this decreased to 26% (6/23) after the exposure to the educational cartoon (p=0.02). At baseline, 60% (27/45) of respondents considered that young females were at highest risk from exposure to ionising radiation, and this increased to 87% (20/23) after exposure to the educational cartoon (p=0.06).
Conclusions This proof-of-concept feasibility study demonstrates that whiteboard cartoons provide a novel and feasible approach to efficiently promote patient safety issues, where a short succinct message is often appropriate.
- medical education
- patient safety
- communication
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Footnotes
Contributors The original concept was conceived by AF, RS and BY. The educational cartoon was designed by AF, PT, RB, RS and RL. The questionnaire was designed by BY and AF, and the data were collected by IB. The first draft of the manuscript and statistical analysis was by AF. All authors contributed to and approved the final draft of the manuscript.
Funding This work was funded by a Behavioural Insights project grant from the Health Foundation.
Disclaimer The funder had no role in the study and collection, analysis and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript.
Competing interests This work was funded by a grant from the Health Foundation to the University of Nottingham. Both mediafortheweb.com and russlaw.co.uk received payment for services provided.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Ethics approval The study was designed as an evaluation of a health services intervention. As a consequence, no ethics approval was required. The waiving of the need for Ethics Committee in this context complies with national guidelines described in Governance Arrangements for Research Ethics Committees (Department of Health and Social Care. Governance arrnagements for research ethics committees, 2011 [Accessed 12 Nov 2019]).
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data availability statement All data relevant to the study are included in the article.