Catching up on my emails after being away and came across this interesting article ‘Health literacy: let’s think again’ by Graham Kramer a GP and National Clinical Lead Self Management and Health Literacy, Scottish Government.
He starts by saying that he doesn’t like the term ‘health literacy’ as not many people understand it. Sounds familar! Anway the intersting thing is that he says that lessons should be learned from computer literacy and instead of making everyone technically expert, computers have got easier to understand. At this point you may disagree but I remember the early days of using computers when you had to use command language to interact with computers for most things. He also gives the example of the results of an MOT which are provided in simple terms that a layperson will understand.
He argues that healthcare professionals should stop using technical words such as those used in the lab that the patient / layperson is unlikely to understand. As he says
“It’s not easy – peoples’ knowledge and skill levels are not as obvious as a physical disability and this unintentionally perpetuates the problem. In fact people often go to extraordinary lengths to hide their lack of understanding and as a result we consistently overestimate their abilities and knowledge.
But if we are going to crack this problem we need to spend less time trying to get our patients to understand us and more time trying to understand them. The issue is not the poor health literacy of patients but the low ‘lay literacy’ of us professionals.”
I also think people need to have the skills to ask more questions and evaluate what they receive. Difficult I know in an health related emotive situation but helps if you have these skills and competencies to draw upon.
Originally added by Christine Irving