Health Literacy Analysis
After reading the articles in preparation for class this week I was surprised to see the statistics in relation to health literacy in the U.S. Working in the ICU in Needham, the majority of my patients are either older, wealthy, or a combination of the two. Therefore, their goal at discharge is either to go back to their care facilities or back home with services/VNA, in either case the person caring for them being a health literate individual. After the lecture in class today, I can see how limited my ideas of health literacy in the elder population was. Health literacy is even more crucial in our aging and elderly population as they are the ones most dependent upon the healthcare systems that we have in place. Health literacy, as we learned,
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Seeing the word at first, I simply thought that it was how much a patient knew about healthcare as whole. After reading the articles, I now understand that health literacy encompasses a large variety of factors, such as speaking in the patients preferred language/getting a translator rather than in English even if a patient can speak conversational English. This is huge. There have been times when I’ve had patient family members come up to me frantic because the patient called home to tell them something about their illness that they had misinterpreted, or even times where I as a caretaker had just assumed that I could talk to the patient in English and they would understand when they really didn’t. I have for a while now made efforts to bridge those gaps in communication through using interpreter services, looking up translations for common words using translating apps, and asking family members to write down common phrases so that the patient can communicate quickly if an interpreter is not readily available. Health literacy is also aided by methods such as teach back, making sure the patient understands what you are have taught them, and breaking the information down to small digestible pieces and use lay terms as appropriate. All these aspects of patient education lead better understanding on the patient/caregivers part and better patient
Seeing the word at first, I simply thought that it was how much a patient knew about healthcare as whole. After reading the articles, I now understand that health literacy encompasses a large variety of factors, such as speaking in the patients preferred language/getting a translator rather than in English even if a patient can speak conversational English. This is huge. There have been times when I’ve had patient family members come up to me frantic because the patient called home to tell them something about their illness that they had misinterpreted, or even times where I as a caretaker had just assumed that I could talk to the patient in English and they would understand when they really didn’t. I have for a while now made efforts to bridge those gaps in communication through using interpreter services, looking up translations for common words using translating apps, and asking family members to write down common phrases so that the patient can communicate quickly if an interpreter is not readily available. Health literacy is also aided by methods such as teach back, making sure the patient understands what you are have taught them, and breaking the information down to small digestible pieces and use lay terms as appropriate. All these aspects of patient education lead better understanding on the patient/caregivers part and better patient