2019 Jun 8

How to Design Perfect Patient Information Leaflets?

The main goal of informative brochures is to help spread information as quickly as possible. But in no other sphere and industry, their influence and importance are as obvious as in healthcare. In hospitals, those informative brochures, known as patient information leaflets, are used to improve comprehension of the medical information amongst patient and non-professionals. They are a must-have for any healthcare organization that takes the health of patients seriously.

Hospitals not only needs to have beautiful-looking and information-dense leaflets — with 17.9% of people admitting they find the information presented there difficult to understand they need to have ones easy to understand. After all, an informed patient is a saved patient.

Consider the context

Before filling in the informative document with content, it is important to understand the context. Everything affects what goes into your patient’s information leaflets — including where, why, when the reader access the informative document and in what mental state. It is on you to carefully consider all the conditions.

First, understand who will read or view your posters and leaflet. You should not only examine their demographic. To create a perfect patient information leaflet, you will need to make sure the tone is matched to your audience, and the information presented is useful. Ask yourself, are the people visiting a doctor in your hospital nervous, excited, distracted, or scared? You should consider the mental state, age, and gender of your patients because you can harm them if not careful.

Second, think of the location. Your leaflets can be located in front of the office, in the waiting line, or inside of the cabinet itself. All that will influence what goes into your patient informative leaflets, brochures, and posters.

The last thing to keep in mind is the purpose of the information you want to share. You can say the same thing in thousands of ways. Do you want your patient information leaflets to comfort, educate, inform, calm, entertain, or excite? Determining the purpose will help you pick the right tone and format.

Pick a format

Now, when you thought about the content, it is time to format of your patient information leaflets. What they will look like is just as important as the information presented. Afterall medium is an integral part of the message and should only enhance it.

SIZE. Before deciding anything, get the size of the informative document out of the way. It will help you understand how much space you have to say what you need to say. Your informative documents can be the size of a poster, brochure, and one-page leaflets. The size you choose will then dictate the details of the format.

FORM. If you have a lot of information you want to share with your visitors and want them to take it home, folded leaflets might be the best choice. If you want the information to be visible from afar, posters are the best choice. For any purpose and message, there is a format that would communicate it better.

LAYOUT. The best patient information leaflets have a clear information structure with images, clear headlines, and logical progression. All the elements should enhance what is being presented. For examples, if you can show it, instead of describing, do so. Visuals improve comprehension of the text and stay in people’s memory for much longer.

FINAL TOUCHES. Patient information leaflets also present an excellent opportunity to show how much you care about the experience of your patients and their health. Make it easy to identify your hospital, include real case studies, and personalize them if possible. To be helpful, your patients should want to open those informative documents later.

Fill it with content

After you choose the format, it is time to fill your patient information leaflets with content. Here you will have three options. You can either contact information centers and use existing informative documents for the hospitals, use a pre-existing template you can find online, or craft your own from scratch.

– Get ready-made posters, flyers, and leaflets

The easiest way is to go with the existing leaflets, posters, and flyers. It is one of the most convenient options. You can find educational posters in the book shop or a specialized medical store. The upside is obvious — you will save a lot of time. However, the downside is that those posters and informative documents will never be as tailored to your audience as you would probably want them to be. If you are a hospital in Dubai and want to warn upcoming patients about the dangers of the sunburns, the information presented in the mass-produced poster will never be entirely relatable.

– Use a patient information leaflets template

If after looking around, you realize that none of the existing options for you, you can use one of the online templates. The upside is — you do not have to design it yourself. There are thousands of options available on almost every topic, and with a little research, you can find the one that fits your needs well enough. The downside — you will still need to customize them. No matter how specific, they can never be perfect. And you will need to handle their printing. Though sometimes, if you are giving customization options and can handle the printing of brochures online, it is more of an upside. Here are some free to download patient information leaflets you can find online to help you get started:

– Create your own

To create a brochure on your own, you will need to make sure it adheres to the best medical standards. Considering people’s lives are on the stake, the content must be accurate, effective, and practical. If you want your hospital to have its informative documents, you will need to hire professional writers and people with a medical background to do the job and then submit it for a review. Some toolkits that help create meaningfully, informative documents would help in the task. Stick to a simple language and aim on increasing comprehension.

Print patient information leaflets

You not only need to find the right template or create it but also know where to print the informative documents. If you are doing it for the first time, it can be a time-consuming and draining process.

Here is where Dubaiprint.com comes into play. Using our online printing platform, you can print your leaflets and many other types of papers affordably, quickly, and with no intermediaries. You will only need to upload an already existent design, customize its features to make sure it looks like you want it, and submit the request.

We do our best to make sure creating an informative brochure does not take you forever. But, of course, if you have questions about any of the steps, you can always contact our support team who will make the process even easier.