Evaluation of the Sound Doctor films

This report is part of Healthwatch Wiltshire’s Better Care plan workstream. Healthwatch Wiltshire is working with the Better Care Plan programme partnership (Wiltshire Council and the Clinical Commissioning Group), to assist in meeting its aim to see health and social care integrated by 2020.

The Sound Doctor provides patient information through a library of over 200 films on a variety of long-term conditions such as diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), dementia, heart failure and back pain. The Sound Doctor videos are 3-5 minutes long and contain tips from patients as well as doctors, nurses, consultants and other health and care professionals. This work aims to evaluate the value of these videos from the point of view of those with long-term conditions, their unpaid carers, and health and care professionals.

The key messages from the report are access to the videos via registration and internet streaming was thought to be a significant barrier to many viewing the videos. Most people Healthwatch spoke to said that they would not view the videos for these reasons. Some people who looked at The Sound Doctor website said that the registration process was confusing, and it led some people to think they had to pay to access the videos. The majority of those who viewed the films said that they were clear, understandable, interesting and that they held their attention. People felt that the information in the films was useful for learning about long-term health conditions both in terms of medical facts and information about living with a condition. Many of those we spoke to said they thought that they would change their behaviour as a result of watching the films. They said that it would depend on the change they were making as to whether they would discuss this with a health professional first. People had a few suggestions about how the videos could be improved, for example, with more use of diagrams.

In light of these findings, the recommendations are good quality information videos such as those by the Sound Doctor should form part of a suite of different types of information about long-term health conditions. Information which is available including videos should be widely publicised. Access to information videos should be simple and straightforward. Information videos should be made available to people who do not use the internet, for example through libraries and support groups. People should still be able to access individually tailored face-to-face information.