Presentation Cites Ways to Counteract Low Health Literacy | National Nursing News

Although low health literacy is a significant barrier to quality care, especially among elderly patients, a recent presentation noted how increased use of simple health literacy assessment tests by nurses and clinicians can help improve communication and health outcomes.

Several screening tools are available to assess health literacy but are underutilized, according to a presentation at the 36th Annual Congress of the Oncology Nursing Society by Ellen C. Mullen, RN, ANP-BC, GNP-BC, nurse practitioner in the Lymphoma and Myeloma Center at The University of MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Furthermore, nurses and other health professionals routinely underestimate the prevalence of limited health literacy — the degree to which an individual can obtain, process and understand health information needed to make appropriate health decisions — and overestimate patients’ ability to understand medical information.

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Helping Patients Understand Their Medical Treatment - Kaiser Health News

An elderly woman sent home from the hospital develops a life-threatening infection because she doesn't understand the warning signs listed in the discharge instructions. A man flummoxed by an intake form in a doctor's office reflexively writes "no" to every question because he doesn't understand what is being asked. A young mother pours a drug that is supposed to be taken by mouth into her baby's ear, perforating the eardrum. And a man in his 70s preparing for his first colonoscopy uses a suppository as directed, but without first removing it from the foil packet.

Each of these examples provided by health-care workers or patient advocates illustrates one of the most pervasive and under-recognized problems in medicine: Americans' alarmingly low levels of health literacy — the ability to obtain, understand and use health information.

Translating Medical Jargon

Some technical terms and what they mean in plain English:

• "myocardial infarction" (heart attack)
• "hyperlipidemia" (high cholesterol)
• "febrile" (feverish)

A 2006 study by the U.S. Department of Education found that 36 percent of adults have only basic or below-basic skills for dealing with health material. This means that 90 million Americans can understand discharge instructions written only at a fifth-grade level or lower. About 52 percent had intermediate skills: They could figure out what time a medication should be taken if the label says "take two hours after eating," while the remaining 12 percent were deemed proficient because they could search a complex document and find the information necessary to define a medical term.

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