Health Literacy

A question was posed in a recent issue of the American journal of health system pharmacy. How does a pharmacist assist people in providing them with information that they can actually understand? The question may be specific, but the answer is valuable to all of us.

Being health literate is sometimes difficult for even the most educated among us. For the clinician it is difficult to know if our patient understands instructions about their care, discharge instructions, or drug dosage. People are often embarrassed to say that they do not understand.

The article Counseling patients with low health literacy give more insight into who is most at risk for having low health literacy, and how to overcome the problem.

The Medical Librarian's Association (MLA) has taken up this issue. There has been discussion about how Librarians can help practitioner with these challenges. The MLA website has a web page devoted to literacy standards of difference national organizations. If would like more information on health literacy just ask one of us in the Medical Library.