Discussion
This randomized clinical trial found provision of clinician-developed, patient-targeted educational videos prior to and following clinic appointments increased patient-knowledge regarding AF at 3 months compared with usual care. Self-reported medication adherence in the selected population was too high to detect a clinically significant difference. These findings add to a developing evidence base supporting augmentation of outpatient care with opportunistic delivery of high-quality educational resources.Higher health literacy, facilitated through patient education, is associated with better cardiovascular outcomes.There is a large evidence base describing the potential role of video education to improve patient knowledge and clinical outcomes.There are several perceived barriers to wider adoption of clinician-created education. Limited time for clinicians to design and deliver patient-education is a commonly highlighted barrier. In this study, videos were developed over the course of 1 week, within working hours, narrated in a single take, and animated at a time-cost of 2 hours per video. Hence, the time required to develop the intervention was low. Second, clinicians often perceive a skill deficit (ie, assume they are unable to design their own videos) and do not pursue original content development. This leads to increased costs of content development when outsourced to paid third parties, which could have flow on effects in intellectual property ownership of content created. We addressed these issues by purchasing third-party software at low cost. This facilitated design of simple video animations reflective of commonly used sketching by clinicians to illustrate concepts to patients. Investigators D.M. and A.T. self-taught VideoScribe over 1 to 2 weeks, acquiring skills in parallel with video development.