Read Your Patients
In addition to its medical and emotional consequences, limited health literacy is estimated to cost U.S. society $50 to $73 billion per year.6
- What is my main problem?
- What do I need to do?
- Why is it important for me to do this?
Brochures written in elementary English and Spanish about the campaign are available from the partnership free for distribution in office and hospital waiting rooms, seniors’ centers, and the like. Doctors are encouraged to adorn their office walls with “Ask Me 3” posters, also in an effort to encourage better physician-patient communication.
More information for patients and physicians is available on the partnership’s Web site: www.p4chc.org.—NM
Who Is Most Likely to Have Literacy Problems?
In general, “the likelihood of low literacy increases in racial and ethnic minority groups, patients with language barriers, and those with low educational achievement,” says Benjamin Powers, MD, associate professor of general internal medicine at Duke University and a physician at the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center in North Carolina.
It’s no surprise that literacy overall, and health literacy specifically, correlate so closely with education and especially with the lack of a high school degree. What is perhaps more surprising is that educational achievement alone does not necessarily guarantee good health literacy.
“Even high school graduates may have trouble,” says Mark Williams, MD. In addition to being a professor of medicine and director of the hospital medicine unit at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Dr. Williams is the editor of the Journal of Hospital Medicine and has studied health literacy problems for years. “Some highly literate people may have problems reading or absorbing health-related information if they’re sick and not feeling well.”
These people are not illiterate in the conventional sense, but they may have inadequate functional health literacy skills, at least in certain settings.
Age is another risk factor. In one survey of Medicare enrollees, at least one-third of people age 65 or older had some degree of health illiteracy, Dr. Williams says. As with so many other skills, proficient reading requires regular practice, and people tend to read less as they age, so their literacy skills may decline. “It’s especially a problem for the ‘oldest old,’ people who are 75 years old or more,” he explains.
Language and cultural differences also enter into the equation. A patient may be well educated and able to articulate in her own language (perhaps even able to converse well in English under normal circumstances), but may be unfamiliar with medical terminology. Put her in a situation in which she feels ill, flustered, and disoriented, and her communication skills may deteriorate even more, says Dr. Halasyamani.
In short, health literacy consists of many components, including “an emotional overlay, information overload, and cultural overload. All of these factor into the patients’ ability to understand what we tell them,” says Barbara DeBuono, MD, MPH, senior medical advisor on U.S. Public Health and Policy at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.
Issues Unique to Hospitalists
There are also a few issues unique to hospitalists and their patients, warns Dr. DeBuono, who is also on the board of the Partnership for Clear Health Communication (See “Ask Me 3,” at right.) “Hospitalists don’t necessarily have a long-term relationship with these patients, so they have to make a quick assessment of the patient’s ability to understand and absorb information. Then they have to determine the best way to communicate that information, and, when necessary, change their communication strategy to fit the circumstances.”
