What is an Aortic Dissection?
10 Things I've Leaned about Visual Communication: 2. People have short attention spans
Hello friends.
Recently, I started sharing my list of the ‘10 Things I’ve Learned About Visual Communication‘ from my perspective as a physician. The list is completely anecdotal—something I gathered over the years, drawing simplified medical pictures for my patients. As I continue to make new illustrations for my patients, I refer to this list all the time to ensure my illustrations are helpful.
Previously, I shared the number 1 on my list (click for a refresher): People like active learning.
Here’s number 2 on my list: People have short attention spans.
Do you remember the ‘telephone’ game that we all played as children? It’s the game where you whisper a phrase into your friend’s ear, and then they would whisper into another friend’s ear, and so on and on. You would go from start to finish and see how distorted a phrase would get. Sometimes, it would get pretty funny. Often, the more complicated the phrase, the more the distortion.
Well, in medicine, I see this game being played all the time. Many family members frequently call me to ask medical questions. They tell me they visited their doctor and were told ‘XYZ.” Sometimes, what they tell me makes sense. Often, it doesn’t. I realize that I’m in the midst of the game of ‘telephone,’ with complicated information being retold and unfortunately, becoming distorted.
During the height of Covid, I saw the ‘telephone’ game in real-time. Hospital protocols allowed only one family member back with the patient in their room. The rest of the family waited in hospital parking lots or at home. I would explain a diagnosis to a patient and family member at the bedside. The family member would then leave the ER and re-explain it at home to the rest of the family. Even though I tried to explain things simply, I knew the potential for distortion.
One night, I took care of a patient who had an aortic dissection. A dissection occurs when you get a tear in the wall of the aorta. Blood then travels into this false passage, and patients can get quite sick. Dissections often occur because of chronically high blood pressure. I know this diagnosis can be confusing to explain verbally so, of course, I used my simplified illustration for my patient and her daughter (page 34 from my Diagnosketch book).
After I explained what was going on, the daughter asked to take a picture on her cell phone. Of course! She told me that she felt confident to explain this diagnosis to her anxiously waiting family members. She would not have to re-tell a complicated explanation; she could just share this simple picture and explain it in a way that she understands. I realized that simple illustrations eliminate the distortion that happens with the ‘telephone’ game. I started encouraging all my patients to take a picture of the illustrations I use with them.
In the ER, we often hand patients pages and pages of ‘discharge papers.’ When I leave my shift, I sometimes see these discharge papers in the trashcan outside the ER. I totally understand. Some papers are not very helpful and often difficult to read. Also, they are not easy to share because they are several pages long.
I think one-page simplified illustrations can help prevent the distortion that occurs with long, wordy discussions. They are easy to look at, understand, and share with family and friends. These days, I try to fit everything a patient should understand about his/her diagnosis into a one-page illustration, if possible.
Thanks for reading. I hope that you enjoyed this post. I’ve heard from several subscribers about what type of information they enjoy reading in my posts. About half said they enjoyed the health literacy/illustration posts, and half enjoyed the medical humanities posts. However, the majority told me that they enjoy both. This is perfect because these are my two main interests. So, in the future, I’ll alternate topics every month. Hope to see you next month. Stay well!