Introduction / Innovation Concept: Effective communication between health providers and patients is central to patient safety, health education and patient empowerment. Previous studies in the Calgary Zone demonstrated that less than fifty percent of emergency department patients thought discharge handouts communicated health information well and even fewer thought the handout information would aid them in care at home. A partnership between the Department of Information Design, Mount Royal University and the Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Calgary, seeks to provide an innovative solution to this problem. Methods: The Calgary Zone Department of Emergency Medicine has partnered with the Mount Royal University Department of Information Design community service learning course. Information design students will work to develop infographics based on the “Choosing Wisely Alberta” Campaign Topics, with content expertise provided by the Department of Emergency Medicine. Curriculum, Tool, or Material: The five “Choosing Wisely Alberta” topics are: CT scans for adults with head injuries, CT scans to find Blood Clots in the lung, Imaging Tests for Headaches, Imaging tests for lower back pain, Treating Sinusitis. The target audience for the project will involve staff physicians, patients, public and government. Student involvement will direct their individual projects to these target audiences and will consider important issues such as non-English speaking patients, patients with low health-literacy (marginalized populations) and “super-users” of emergency departments, health policy (government and not-for-profit), physicians (emergency and primary care) and other health care workers. Infographics will be available for presentation at CAEP 2016. Conclusion: Information graphics will be used to facilitate clinician-patient discussions for empowered decision making, facilitate clinician-learner decisions based on evidence based guidelines, and improve knowledge translation for health system administrators and policy makers regarding appropriate emergency department resource allocation.

Background: Health care professionals are recommended to deliver patient-centered care in dementia; however, guidance and training on how to do this in practice is currently lacking. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate pragmatically an educational intervention for old age psychiatrists to promote patient-centered care in their consultations with people with dementia and their carers.

Methods: We used a range of methods to (i) identify the theoretical components of patient-centered care (literature review) and (ii) observe actual practice (video recording of 53 consultations between old age psychiatrists and people with dementia and their family carers). We also interviewed participants from (ii) including 7 old age psychiatrists, 25 people with dementia and 44 carers. From this we developed a workshop for old age psychiatrists and piloted and evaluated it. Pre- and post-workshop questionnaires were completed; the latter included an assessment of planned and subsequent behavior change by participants.

Results: The educational workshop, attended by 41 old age psychiatrists, focused on how best to structure the consultation and the most effective communication skills to use in consultation with people with dementia. Three months after the workshop, 59% had made one or more changes to the structure of their consultations, 71% had used new communication skills and 56% had reflected further on their practice.

Conclusions: We developed an educational intervention with both a theoretical and empirical basis. The workshops resulted in many changes to self-reported practice; whether this was noticeable to patients and carers requires further study.