Week 8

         The AHRQ site providers some excellent comments about increasing patient health literacy. Health literacy refers to an individual's ability to receive, process, and comprehend fundamental health information and also services necessary to make informed health choices. This has been a huge subject in the health industry. As nurses, we often have to re-explain to patients what the physician was saying. This is something that we will have to bear in mind as future suppliers. It's critical to explain diagnoses and procedures to those in need in layman's terms to make sure that they comprehend what's going on and to reduce health literacy rates (Kronick,2016).

As future professionals, we must be rigorous in our pursuit of knowledge so that we can explain a patient's health to them. Every healthcare institution should apply universal health literacy safeguards. These safeguards include: streamlining communication with all the patients and checking that they comprehend, making the office atmosphere and health-care system more user-friendly, and supporting patients' attempts to improve their health. These measures, if used in our practice, will be excellent techniques for improving health literacy. Other teaching strategies include utilizing images or drawings instead of extensive textual instructions, which some patients may find more engaging (Farquhar,2008).

References

Kronick R. (2016). AHRQ's Role in Improving Quality, Safety, and Health System Performance. Public health reports (Washington, D.C. : 1974), 131(2), 229–232. https://doi.org/10.1177/003335491613100205

Farquhar M. (2008) AHRQ Quality Indicators. In: Hughes RG, editor. Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US); 2008 Apr. Chapter 45. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2664/