Pacient's experience
Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol is embracing a new approach to the patient relationship, in which the patient plays a leading role in their health and well-being. Patient empowerment involves a paradigm shift, in which the patient is not merely a passive recipient but an active and responsible participant in managing their health.
Through the eSalut programme, the hospital's professionals can have smoother contact with patients and provide them with reliable information and advice to empower them and help them learn good health habits and knowledge. In this way, they can make important decisions about treatments or the various options to choose from for themselves, or with the help of the medical team, if the patient so wishes.
To delve deeper into this aspect, Germans Trias Hospital has committed to developing and deepening various forms of patient participation, such as:
Patient empowerment
eSalut offers patients various types of explanations and advice to help them better understand their condition, good habits to improve their quality of life, and a range of personalised content tailored to their case, which has been developed or validated by their healthcare teams.
Studies confirm that patients who are better informed about their conditions tend to have fewer relapses and visit A&E less often.
To make this both educational and entertaining, patients can find quiz-style games where they have to choose the correct answer to a question about the materials provided.
Health literacy
For a patient to be able to make decisions about their health, they must be able to understand what their care team is telling them.
► On the one hand, all the application's content is adapted into simple language and explanations are also added for concepts that may be complex to understand.
► On the other hand, technical terms are introduced, with their explanations, to allow for deeper exploration if the patient so wishes. In this way, patients with greater interest are provided with resources to become expert patients.
Shared decisions
The hospital is committed to enabling patients and healthcare professionals to dialogue, evaluate and agree on how best to address illness and adopt the most suitable lifestyle, taking into account both the diagnosis and scientific knowledge, as well as personal preferences that best meet the needs of the patient.
These shared decisions are particularly indicated in situations where there is more than one alternative for a diagnosis or screening, a medical or surgical procedure, a pharmacological treatment, or lifestyle changes.
They are also particularly useful when decisions are sensitive to patient preferences or when there is uncertainty about the effectiveness of the treatment. Before making a decision, the patient must be informed about the key questions they should ask and the information they need to know.
PREMS
Along the same lines, the eSalut programme continuously seeks to improve and adapt to patients' needs. For this reason, each time a new use case (disease or health process) is launched in the mobile application, a group of expert patients is asked to rate different parameters, such as usability, design, content or functionality.
To do this, “PREM” forms are used, which, as well as serving as a tool for discovering potential improvements, allow the quality of the different variables analysed to be quantified.
The PREMs used have been scientifically validated.
These are different complementary approaches to help patients, offering them tools that allow them to better understand their health status, empower themselves and actively participate in service improvement processes.
► To make a decision about your health, you must first know what options you have and what they mean for you. To be able to take it all in, you need to understand what the healthcare team is saying and the information they provide.