A qualitative exploration of patients' attitudes towards the ‘Participate Inform Notice Know’ (PINK) patient safety video

Abstract

Objective

To explore patients' attitudes towards the PINK video, a patient education video aimed at encouraging hospital patients' involvement in safety-relevant behaviours.

Design

Qualitative semi-structured interviews. Detailed field notes were taken during the interviews which were analysed using content analysis.

Setting

One National Health System (NHS) teaching hospital based in London, UK.

Participants

Thirty-six in-patients aged between 20 and 79 years, 18 of them males.

Intervention

The PINK video is a short animated educational video aimed at encouraging patients to be involved in the safety of their care during hospitalization.

Main outcome measures

Patients' perceptions of how informative, relevant and acceptable the video is; attitudes towards participating in the recommended safety-related behaviours and; potential negative side effects of watching the video.

Results

Overall the video was received favourably among the interviewees. Commonly cited benefits included raising awareness and facilitating patients to be involved in their care during their hospital stay. More variability was found in participants' views with regard to the video's role as a patient safety enhancement tool. A number of suggestions for improvement of the video were provided relating to tailoring its content and design to meet the needs of individual patients and their circumstances.

Conclusions

Educational videos such as PINK have significant potential to empower patients in the safety and quality of their care. However, efforts to implement patient safety educational videos in practice need to consider different patient groups' needs and characteristics instead of trying to adopt ‘a one size fits all’ approach.

patient involvement, patient safety, patient education, hospitalization, educational video