PCC-1 - Health Literacy: Effective Client Communication and Education

Health Literacy is the ability to read, compute, understand and act on health information to make informed decisions. Health literacy affects people's ability to navigate the healthcare system, including filling out complex forms and locating providers and services; sharing personal information with providers; and engaging in self-care and chronic-disease management. Low health literacy is a serious threat to the well-being of persons seeking medical care. With the increasing diversity of clients, we may observe that our communication skills are less effective with people from backgrounds different from our own. Health information can overwhelm even persons with advanced literacy skills because medical science progresses rapidly. Moreover, health information provided in a stressful or unfamiliar situation is unlikely to be retained. Quite simply, the responsibility is ours as health professionals to facilitate health literacy through communication in plain language. Without clear communication, we cannot expect people to adopt the healthy behaviors and recommendations that we champion. The educational goal of this session is to offer participants easy-to-implement strategies for developing written/verbal patient education materials and assessment tools they can use to ensure clients understand the important health information we provide. The session will provide an overview of health literacy and review techniques for clear and effective communication, both verbal and written. It addresses communication with those from other cultures, writing/selecting easy-to-read health materials, and assessment tools to ensure clients understand the healthcare services provided and have the skills needed to access, understand, and use health information. Participants will learn best practice strategies for using interpreters and translation services including how to conduct a triadic interview. They will have the opportunity through case examples to evaluate sample educational materials for principles of literacy. They will also have the opportunity to administer 3 short health literacy assessments.