Hi Everyone! My name is Keshika Vasuja from the HealthNeedsRx blog team. Today, I will be discussing what health literacy is, why it's important, and how we can address it. Health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and use basic healthcare information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions and follow instructions for treatment. Anyone who needs health information and services also needs health literacy skills to:
Communication is essential in healthcare. The most valuable source of information about patients is the patients themselves. Patients communicate what their symptoms are, what levels of pain they’re feeling, and how you can potentially help. If a patient can’t communicate with healthcare workers, that's a huge problem. Language barriers are always troublesome, but especially in healthcare where someone’s life or health could be at risk from miscommunication. Fortunately, there’s a solution: Bilingual healthcare workers. If you speak more than one language, you could very well save a life with your communication skills. Being bilingual isn’t just about communicating literal information to patients. It’s also about making them feel at ease and cared for, and bilingual healthcare workers can also provide hospitals with additional cultural context when providing care for patients from diverse backgrounds. This example of culturally-appropriate care, for instance, describes how a nurse fluent in Mandarin was able to discern that a Chinese patient preferred hot drinking water with her medication, rather than cold. According to health.gov, 90% of people have difficulty in using everyday health information which is available in health care facilities, retail outlets, media, and communities. Low health literacy is associated with poor health outcomes and higher health costs. It affects people’s ability to research and use health information, adopt healthy behavior, and act on important public health alerts. According to medical practitioners who have worked with low-literacy patients, “some of their most articulate and poised patients have poor reading skills”. Nearly 50% of all adults have problems understanding prescriptions, appointment slips, informed consent documents, insurance forms, and health education materials. Through all its impacts — medical errors, increased illness and disability, loss of wages, and compromised public health — low health literacy is estimated to cost the U.S. economy up to $236 billion every year. Ways to Address Low Health Literacy:
Sources: https://homehealthconsulting.wordpress.com/2012/10/21/health-literacy/#:~:text=The%20Centers%20for%20Health%20Care%20strategies%20%28CHCS%29%20defines,and%20services%20needed%20to%20make%20appropriate%20health%20 http://www.chcs.org/media/What_is_Health_Literacy.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/healthliteracy/learn/index.html https://www.ameritech.edu/blog/bilingual-healthcare-worker-advantages/
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Welcome to our blog, Medquity!Here we will post extra articles on health disparities to display the profound health inequities in our healthcare system. These are updated every other weekend, so check back regularly! Archives
July 2021
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