It’s a recurring story: A mother brings her child for follow-up. When discussing how things have gone, mom summons her phone and references a white board picture taken during her initial visit. It’s a picture that outlines what her child has and what we’re doing doing about it.

Collaborative thinking on a white board is central to the patient encounter

As most of my readers and patients know, collaborative thinking on a dry erase white board are central to patient encounters in my clinic. The arrows, lines, schematic images, and emphasizing enclosure boxes that happen in real-time create a resource that has no written equivalent. I’ve found that the image captures things and cues me into streams of thinking that can’t be captured in the after visit summary of Epic or even a paper chart.

Patient education is traditionally verbal

I began using this form of visual communication after reading Mike Rhode’s book, Sketchnotes. I call these individualized patient products clinical sketchnotes. I’ve been doing this for about a decade and each year my process and product becomes more refined.

Traditionally, patient education is verbal. Instructions are nearly always typed. All because it’s the way it’s always been done.

We need to be open to different formats of collaborative dialog and medical documentation that meet patients where they’re at.

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This was my earliest description of how I use whiteboards back in 2009.