• Tailor educational interventions to be relevant to the learner.
• Cardiac Rehabilitation Needs Assessment Tool may help identify patient priorities
• Identify patients’ specific learning needs and work with them to set realistic goals
• Identify the patients preferred learning styles, i.e. visual, auditory, reading/writing or kinaesthetic

• Focus on the learning needs identified in your assessment; avoid overwhelming the patient with too much information
• Reinforce learning through repetition in as many forms as possible, including written, video, audio, face-to-face
• Use professionally developed written materials where possible
• Provide opportunities for individual and group education
• Seize the ‘teachable moment’ where an unplanned opportunity during an encounter seems the right time to educate

• Consider evaluating the effectiveness of an educational intervention when planning an intervention
• Include the following as outcome measures:
  • Knowledge
  • Behaviour change
  • Self-efficacy
  • Quality of life
  • Satisfaction
  • Healthcare utilisation
  • Unplanned readmission
• Use the ‘teach-back’ method (see diagram below) to ensure the patient has understood the information. Teach-back involves asking the patient to tell you in their own words what they thought they heard. If there is a gap in understanding, ‘close the loop’ by showing or explaining again[#nielsen-ga-bartely-a-coleman-e-et-al.-2008]

Figure 1: ‘Teach-back’ learning loop