Patient-centred care is tailored to the needs of patients and is necessary for better health outcomes, especially for individuals with limited health literacy (LHL). However, its implementation remains challenging. The key to effectively address patient-centred care is to include perspectives of patients with LHL within the curricula of (future) healthcare providers (HCP). This systematic review aimed to explore and synthesize evidence on the needs, experiences and preferences of patients with LHL and to inform an existing educational framework. We searched three databases: PsychInfo, Medline and Cinahl, and extracted 798 articles. One-hundred and three articles met the inclusion criteria. After data extraction and thematic synthesis, key themes were identified. Patients with LHL and chronic diseases encounter multiple problems in the care process, which are often related to a lack of person-centeredness. Patient perspectives were categorized into four key themes: (1) Support system; (2) Patient self-management; (3) Capacities of HCPs; (4) Barriers in healthcare systems. “Cultural sensitivity” and “eHealth” were identified as recurring themes. A set of learning outcomes for (future) HCPs was developed based on our findings. The perspectives of patients with LHL provided valuable input for a comprehensive and person-centred educational framework that can enhance the relevance and quality of education for (future) HCPs, and contribute to better person-centred care for patients with LHL.

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Comprehensible communication by itself is not sufficient to overcome health literacy related problems. Future doctors need a larger scope of capacities in order to strengthen a patient’s autonomy, participation, and self-management abilities. To date, such comprehensive training-interventions are rarely embedded in curricula, nor systematically evaluated. We assessed whether comprehensive training increased these health literacy competencies, in a randomized controlled trial (RCT), with a waiting list condition. Participants were international undergraduate medical students of a Dutch medical faculty (intervention: 39; control: 40). The 11-h-training-intervention encompassed a health literacy lecture and five interactive small-group sessions to practise gathering information and providing comprehensible information, shared decision-making, and enabling of self-management using role-play and videotaped conversations. We assessed self-reported competencies (knowledge and awareness of health literacy, attitude, self-efficacy, and ability to use patient-centred communication techniques) at baseline, after a five and ten-week follow-up. We compared students’ competencies using multi-level analysis, adjusted for baseline. As validation, we evaluated demonstrated skills in videotaped consultations for a subsample. The group of students who received the training intervention reported significantly greater health literacy competencies, which persisted up to five weeks afterwards. Increase was greatest for providing comprehensible information (B: 1.50; 95% confidence interval, CI 1.15 to 1.84), shared decision-making (B: 1.08; 95% CI 0.60 to 1.55), and self-management (B: 1.21; 95% CI 0.61 to 1.80). Effects regarding demonstrated skills confirmed self-rated competency improvement. This training enhanced a larger scope of health literacy competences and was well received by medical students. Implementation and further evaluation of this training in education and clinical practice can support sustainable health literacy capacity building of future doctors and contribute to better patient empowerment and outcomes of consultations.