According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), when individuals comprehend the fundamental concepts of health and well-being such as illnesses, bodily processes, treatment regimens and so on, they have proficient health literacy skills. Health literacy generally refers to a person’s ability to obtain and comprehend information on matters of health (Batterham et al., 2016). Nurses, clinicians, physicians, and other health practitioners have an obligation to ensure patients and caregivers understand the varying health-related issues.
Nurses are the single most interactive group with patients. For this reason, they are better placed in terms of educating patients and or caregivers on matters health. Nurses influence health literacy of patients or care givers through the ways they communicate, present, and organize information (Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, 2014).
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Patients or people suffering from mild health conditions often access health-related content from online sources such as websites, blogs, social media, and patient portals. Some of these sources may contain true or misleading information. For patients, it is necessary to know which health databases are credible. They can do so through looking at the major health organizations diagnosis of various conditions and looking for links to other websites. Personal blogs may convey information based on personal experiences which are not similar to everyone.
Many patients have often self-diagnosed themselves based on information from online sources. Since the internet is readily available at the convenience of smartphones, patients have at one point in time researched on symptoms of a condition and self-diagnosed themselves when similar symptoms show. What most people do not know is that different health conditions may have quite similar symptoms. It is therefore crucial that patients or caregivers seek advice from nurses, other health practitioners or the standard and recommended health organization databases for health-related information. Improving the health literacy of patients could be done through intervention processes such as amplification and facilitation. Amplification entails using one intervention to intensify other smaller interventions. Facilitation entails intervention measures that are interdependent (McCormack et al., 2017).
References
Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (2014) “Health Literacy: Taking action to improve safety and quality” Retrieved 25 January 2019 http://www.safetyandquality.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Health-Literacy-Taking-action-to-improve-safety-and-quality.pdf
Batterham R. Hawkins M. Collins P. Buchbinder R. & Osborne R. (2016). “Health literacy: applying current concepts to improve health services and reduce health inequalities” Public health , 132, 3-12.
McCormack L. Thomas V. Lewis M. & Rudd R. (2017) Improving low health literacy and patient engagement: a social-ecological approach. Patient education and counseling , 100 (1), 8-13.
