Patients waiting to see their health care provider are mostly stuck killing time until their appointment. They might scroll on their phones or read a complementary magazine — not exactly exciting stuff. But that waiting time doesn’t have to be wasted with patient education videos.
Playing patient education videos in your waiting room can:
- Offer patients information about their care and treatment options
- Build trust between the patient and the provider or healthcare organization
- Entertain and engage
Streaming news or daytime TV in your waiting room potentially exposes patients to stressful or distracting media. You have no control over what is shown, including commercials. Waiting room video content services can solve that problem, but you’ll need to bring your personal touch for the best results.
Options for Waiting Room Videos
To be clear, you don’t have to make your own waiting room videos. Plenty of services are happy to provide waiting room content for you at varying price points.
For example, the American Dental Association provides streaming videos for the waiting room for a retail price of between $1800 and $1000 depending on whether you’re an ADA member.
Services like Uscenes let you download soothing imagery like aquarium or nature scenes and play it back on any television. Their collection of waiting room videos costs about $350.
Companies like OptiSigns will provide a platform that allows you to build a playlist of content for a single waiting room or whole healthcare chain. Content can include positive reviews of your clinic, videos of patient ambassadors, and other custom content. Pricing for this service ranges from $10 to $45 per screen monthly.
Upshow offers a range of entertainment options for waiting rooms starting at $50 per month. While you certainly can use their pre-existing content in your waiting room, you’ll get the best results by mixing in some custom content that educates your patients about their health and your services.
There’s even a free with ads service called AtmosphereTV that lets you stream more than 40 channels directly to your waiting room televisions, and insert targeted messages in place of some of their ad breaks. That means you can combine your custom videos with their library of content.
Relying on a content service is fine, but if you want to connect with patients and control your messaging, it’s time to think about making your own waiting room videos.
Examples of Waiting-Room Worthy Patient Education Videos
Here’s a closer look at some videos created by healthcare organizations to inspire your next waiting room video. Each one fills a specific need for patients.
Sightpath Medical LASIK
This video we created for LASIC Doctor Network would be perfect for an ophthalmologist’s or optometrists’s office. It uses striking imagery to break down some of the myths surrounding LASIK, educating patients on procedure and it’s uses.
Personal Care How-to Videos
This video from Kaiser Permanente is aimed at kids. This particular video is a good option for dentists, orthodontists or dental surgeons. But any care provider can probably think of a few personal care topics they’d love to educate their patients about. Consider topics like sleep hygiene, blood glucose monitoring, proper hand washing technique, nutrition, etc.
Wellvii Medical Device
Some care providers might shy away from running commercials in their waiting room. But if there are treatments or devices your patients are likely to use, it can be worth making a video to share with them. This video we made for Wellvii explains how the device works in an approachable and easy-to-understand way.
General Patient Education
General patient education videos, like this one from the The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), can help you share information about common diseases and conditions. These videos can help make sure that patients are alert to the signs and symptoms that might be worth mentioning to their health care provider.
What-to-Expect Videos
We don’t have an example to share here, because each of these is unique. What-to-expect videos give patients a look behind the curtain. It shows them what to expect from their appointment. You might use these to introduce care providers, walk patients through a standard visit, or explain why you ask certain questions.
What-to-expect videos help put patients at ease so they can get the most out of their appointment.
How to Make a Useful Patient Education Video
A lot of the general rules of video creation apply here. You want videos that are entertaining and eye-catching. They should tell a compelling story and offer useful information. Ideally, they should be enjoyable to watch as well.
A useful patient education video:
- Has a clear goal based on what you want the patient to learn or remember
- Targets a specific patient to answer their questions and concerns
- Informs in an accessible way without speaking down to the client
- Uses strong character design or high-quality video
- Includes both voiceover and captions for accessibility
Animation is an ideal choice for waiting room video because it’s engaging, information-dense, and can appeal to a wide range of audiences. It allows you to show medical procedures and tell patient stories without putting real patients on camera.
If you’re ready to explore how patient education videos can make your waiting room more inviting, contact the healthcare animation experts at IdeaRocket. We’ve created healthcare, patient journey, and medical and pharmaceutical MOA videos for a wide range of organizations. Our storytelling skills and understanding of the healthcare industry make us the ideal video creation partner for health care providers like you. Contact us today.
