Patient Waiting Room Education

Our patients are in contact with a multitude of health messages every day through television, radio, Twitter, Facebook and email. As their physicians, we often take issue with the content of these messages, but our office visits are too brief to address every possible piece of health misinformation that our patient has been exposed to.

In our office, we have taken advantage of the computers present in each examination room, and have used their screensaver function as a means of communicating specific messages to patients. This program was implemented in 2013, and has received tremendous feedback from both patients as well as other health care providers who have visited our clinic.

The content of these screensavers covers the full range of health topics, including cancer prevention and detection, diet, exercise, child safety, pregnancy, environment, online resources, and alcohol and smoking cessation.

In this report, I will outline how a physician can easily implement this program in their own offices. The implementation I have described is for an Apple-based system, but this can be adapted to a PC environment as well.

Step 1) Getting Started

On an Apple product, you must download Keynote, which is the equivalent of Powerpoint for a PC. This only needs to be downloaded on the computer where you will be creating the slides. You do not need Keynote on each computer in your office.

To keep files organized, I have created one folder entitled “Screensaver Master”, with subfolders entitled “Screensaver Master Slides” and “Screensaver Slides”. You can use whichever file names seem intuitive to you. Right-click on your desktop, and click “New Folder”. Rename this folder as you wish. Open this folder, and create the two subfolders by right-clicking and selecting “New Folder” two separate times.

Step 2) Creating Slides

Within the “Screensaver Master Slides” folder, I have created ten different slideshows, each with a unique background. These slideshows are named Slides1, Slides2, etc.

When you open a slideshow, all of the slides within it are available to modify. The slideshow “Slides1” can be seen below. Font and text can be modified just as you would with any word processor. Pictures can be added easily from the web with copy and paste functions.

To add a slide within an existing slideshow, right click along the left panel and click “New Slide”. To move a slide to another position within the slideshow, click on the slide on the left panel, and drag it to its new position within the slideshow.

If you wish to create slides using a new background, within Keynote along the top dashboard click “File”, then “New”. A variety of backgrounds will come up which you can choose from. Save this new slideshow under the “Screensaver Master Slides” folder.

Step 3) Creating images from the slides

Now that you have created all of your slides, the next step is to convert these into .jpg files. Within the slideshow, click “File”, then “Export”, then “Images”. The first

time that you convert the slides for a specific slideshow, click “All” in the next window. (When you do future image conversions for only specific slides within a slideshow, select “From” then indicate the range of slides that you wish to convert.) Click “Next”.

The next window to open up will ask where you want to save these images. Click “Desktop”, then select the “Screensaver Slides” folder. Leave the file name as is (whether it is Slides1, Slides2, etc.)

This is a sample of what your “Screensaver Slides” folder will look like once your images are all converted.

Step 4) Transferring images to your office workstations

You have a couple of options for transferring images to your office workstations. If your computers are networked, you can save the “Screensaver Slides” on a networked computer, and share them between all workstations. Creating a network and sharing is beyond the scope of this tutorial.

You need to save a copy of “Screensaver Slides” onto the desktop of each workstation. A portable flashdrive is an easy way to achieve this. (If you shared this folder via a network, a permanent copy still has to be copied onto your desktop, otherwise the folder may be not reliably accessible as a screensaver.)

Step 5) Creating the screensaver

Click the Apple button in the top left corner of your desktop, and click “System Preferences”. Under Personal, click “Desktop & Screen Saver”. Click on the “+” button on the left side of this window, and click “Add Folder of Pictures”. In the window that opens up, click “Desktop” on the left, then select the “Screensaver Slides” folder. Click “Choose”.

You will now be back at the “Desktop & Screen Saver” window. Adjust the scrolling button to 3 or 5 minutes, depending on your preference to when you want the screensaver to active. Click “Options”, and ensure that the following are checked: Present slides in random order, Cross-fade between slides, Crop slides to fill screen.

Changing all of the settings in step 5 needs to be done on all workstations.

Congratulations! You have now created your educational screensavers, and they are ready for your patients to enjoy. Keep an eye out for health stories in the media, and for changes in health care that you want your patients to know about. Getting these messages to your patients is as easy as a few clicks away!