Promoting Strategies to Overcome Low Health Literacy and Improve Patient Understanding in Outpatient Setting

Over 36% of US adults have low health literacy. This contributes to poorer health outcomes and increased costs for individuals and health care systems. Many strategies can be used to overcome the barrier of low health literacy and improve patient understanding in clinical encounters. As health care providers have been shown to underestimate patient\u27s needs for information and overestimate their own ability to communicate effectively with patients, these strategies should be used universally. We prepared a presentation on health literacy, its epidemiology, risk factors and implications, and strategies to overcome low health literacy and improve patient understanding. We focused most heavily on Teach-Back, a strategy to assess patient understanding. We presented this to a group of residents and attendings at EMMC Center for Family Medicine and Residency. We prepared pre-presentation and post-presentation surveys to evaluate effect of presentation.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1250/thumbnail.jp