Hospitals looking for patient education videos can license a ready-made library that covers many topics, or commission videos made for their own patients, policies, and brand. Both can work. The real question is whether a particular video will help a patient once they are home.
A free federal checklist
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality publishes a free tool for this, the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT). AHRQ describes it as a way to evaluate and compare materials on two things: understandability and actionability. There is a separate version for audiovisual materials, PEMAT-A/V, so it can be applied to video directly.
Scores are the share of applicable items a material meets. AHRQ's guidance says the higher the score, the more understandable or actionable the material, and it does not set a single pass mark. That makes it most useful for comparing options side by side.
What the audiovisual checklist asks
A few of the PEMAT-A/V items are worth checking on any video you are considering:
- Is the purpose completely clear?
- Does it use plain, everyday language, and define medical terms when it has to use them?
- Is the information broken into short segments, in a logical order, with a summary?
- Is on-screen text easy to read, and is the narration clear and well paced?
- Does it name at least one specific action the patient can take, speak to the viewer directly, and break that action into clear steps?
A video can explain a condition well and still leave a patient unsure what to do next.
Questions to ask any vendor
- Who checks the clinical content, and when? Ask whether review happens once at the end or at the script stage and again on the finished video.
- Does it match your instructions? A video that contradicts your own discharge paperwork creates the confusion it was meant to prevent.
- Which languages, and who reviews the translation? Ask whether a qualified human reviews any translated script.
- How does it reach patients? QR codes on printed materials, links in portal messages or after-visit summaries, and waiting room screens all reach patients at different moments.
- What does the reporting measure? Views and completion rates show whether patients opened and finished a video. They do not show whether the patient understood it.
- Who owns the finished video? This matters if you ever want to host it yourself or change vendors.
Where Qik fits
Qik Productions makes custom animated patient education videos for kids and adults, about two to three minutes long. Each topic is reviewed by a specialized pharmacist in that area, who checks the script and then the finished video. Videos reach patients by QR code, text, email, or direct link, and the reporting shows views and completion. You can order one video at a time, with no annual contract. See how it works.
.webp)