INNOVARA DIGEST: 3 STRATEGIES FOR BETTER PATIENT ENGAGEMENT

This week, our chosen articles revolve around the use of storytelling to increase patient engagement. In our research, we have uncovered 3 strategies to help you build lasting relationships with patients.

1. 

   Tell a clear story: This PMLive opinion piece by Grant Fisher of Firstlight paints a bleak history of emotive storytelling in healthcare. The author discusses the pharmaceutical industry’s struggle to reach and empower their audience while still remaining compliant. “Companies have lost their personalities and people are being swamped with information that they don’t understand,” Fisher writes. “While other industries have moved full-steam ahead with emotive storytelling to engage and inform people, the healthcare industry has been left behind.”Meanwhile, the task of clearly communicating with patients has been left to advocacy groups, nonprofits, and academia. In this example from Health Promotion International, a group of researchers from the University of Missouri shared the stories of HIV patients with a Photovoice project. These patient-driven stories caused improved self-efficacy for HIV medication adherence.

2. 

   Get emotional: MM&M’s Healthcare Brands Turn to Emotion to Better Tell Their Stories discusses the innovative ways that pharmaceutical giants are authentically engaging with patients in order to build trust and create value. New technology platforms have been at the forefront of campaigns (namely artificial intelligence and virtual reality), but brands have also had great success in using emotional storytelling and simpler language. The author cites various efforts by Gilead Sciences, Merck, Takeda, UnitedHealthcare, AstraZeneca, and others. This example by Philips Healthcare tells the stories of 18 patients with lung conditions who overcome breathlessness to rediscover their singing voices:

1. 

   Collaborate with your patient: How do you discover the barriers to patient engagement and adherence? Ask the patient. Eyeforpharma’s Communicate Your Way to a Better Patient Experience, discusses ways to inform, motivate, and support patients:
   • Ask structured questions to gauge willingness to participate and find ways to improve the patient’s experience
   • Share the results of surveys so that patients see the impact of their input
   • Establish contact early and often to gain the trust of patients and keep them engaged

A structured way to collaborate with patients is to engage in shared decision-making, “a model of patient-centered care that enables and encourages people to take a role in the medical decisions that affect their health.” (ARHQ) This video, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, explains shared decision-making, using a diabetes patient and primary care physician example.

Bonus: the video also serves as a best practice example of storytelling to produce a better health outcome.

Communication & Engagement is one of Innovara’s core competencies in sales, marketing and medical affairs. To see which experiential learning courses cover this competency, download our development grids