Effectiveness of the Teach-Back Method for Improving Caregivers’ Confidence in Caring for Hospice Patients and Decreasing Hospitalizations

Abstract

Health care professionals use teach-back to foster adherence to treatment recommendations and to improve safety and quality of care. This improvement project, conducted in one division of a home care agency, used a pretest-posttest design with an interprofessional group of hospice home care clinicians to incorporate teach-back into home visits to evaluate if the use of teach-back enhanced caregiver and patient-provider communication, improved caregivers' confidence in caring for hospice home care patients, and decreased hospitalizations. After the intervention, the teach-back group had zero hospitalizations compared with 2 for the non-teach-back group (0% and 1.97%, respectively), and patient-caregiver "confidence" increased from 58% to 81%, pre to post intervention. In conclusion, teach-back is a cost-effective teaching methodology that can be implemented by any discipline to improve patient-provider communication and patient outcomes.