Doctors are faced with challenges in their profession multiple times a day, from a difficult diagnosis to delivering bad news to a patient. One of the more commonplace, but less intense, tasks that a doctor faces is trying to facilitate patient engagement.

In short, doctors are regularly trying to instil a sense of responsibility and accountability in their patients regarding their health and the information that follows.

It can be challenging to try to improve patient engagement for a number of reasons, but ultimately there are steps that can be taken to improve this patient metric. This guide hopes to illuminate a few ways that doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals can improve their patients’ engagement.

Get Online

One of the most common wedges for a patient is the need to interact with a health professional to get their own vitals and health statistics. However, with the rise of the internet and mobile apps, healthcare professionals have the opportunity to update some of these practices. For example, a patient will be much more engaged if they were able to view their health information online, download it and then send it where it needs to go via email. Some clinics have implemented this great feature to great success, going so far as to update their records as soon as a doctor has made a note.

Better Scheduling

Trying to book an appointment to see your doctor is another challenge that patients face, and ultimately lessens their overall engagement. Instead of having your patients call in for an appointment, an online tool that shows their doctor’s entire schedule can be used to book much more easily.

Improved Communication

Whether it is helping a patient better understand a diagnosis or simply communicating something benign, the standard medium for doctors has always been the telephone. However, as communication technology improves, so too does the platforms we use and how we use them. A great way of applying this to patient engagement is through the use of an online instant messaging platform or patient portal. This not only allows for a more direct type of conversation, but it is flexible too.

New Tools for Success

Trying to improve patient engagement is tricky, but thankfully technology has made the world as a whole a much easier place to navigate. This, in turn, has actually helped patient engagement along a great deal. If you can apply the above tips to your working life, then you are sure to see a huge improvement with patient engagement.