Health Literacy, which is as much about common sense as about the three R’s, can nevertheless be a matter of life and death. Rebecca Sudore M.D. covered the issue in a recent talk to a group of healthcare professionals and volunteers in which she included video clips and verbal summaries of cases that bring chills: a woman who didn’t know she was having a hysterectomy until after the fact because she was afraid to ask questions, people who suffered or died simply because they could not read the details about medications or procedures. Health Literacy may be a field still in its infancy but it is a topic, as well as a separate professional discipline, for which the time has come.
Dr. Sudore, whose youthful energy and unassuming demeanor belie an impressive list of credentials in geriatric scholarship and practice, is passionate about the subject. Among the messages she shared, here are just a few:
Health Literacy is defined as “the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.” In other words, if you’re sick or wounded, it’s a pretty good idea to understand what should or should not be done to you – and literally millions of Americans do not.
Millions? Really? Yep, between 40 and 44 million of us are somewhere around a fourth-grade learning level, cannot read signs or medication bottles, poison warnings or the schedules of city buses. Try to imagine making it through the day, if you were in this group, with a bad cold or an infected finger. Another 50 million or so of us are hanging around 4th to 8th grade level, which means we have trouble with “executive functions” such as simple forms or reading a magazine. I hold an advance degree, and don’t even get me started on the difficulty-with-forms issue. If that form, though, means whether or not you agree to a hysterectomy it’s a lot more serious than exchanging data or filing your taxes. Healthcare workers, and sometimes family and friends, must pick up where education or language skills leave off.
Patients, Dr. Sudore explains, are critically hampered not only by lack of education and skills but by shame, fear and a host of other issues. Doctors, often part of the problem, are hampered by lack of time and health-literacy training, and other issues of their own.
Dr. Sudore and her fellow crusaders are out to change all that. They preach keeping messages simple, using plain language, an “Ask-Tell-Ask” method of communicating. Dr. Sudore was pleased, recently, to encounter a physician who caught himself hurriedly saying “Any questions?” to a patient and then corrected the phrase as she had told him, “What are your questions?”
It may be a way off, but Health Literacy is gaining ground.
Dear Franthis is a timely reminder. Tablets and capsules are dispensed in plastic envelopes and doctors write figures which the very illiterate can read e.g.(1/1- p.m.).I worry because too many uncaring dispensers speak too quickly and illiterate patients cannot remember what has been said.God bless. Warm greetings from Sarawak.