Health Literacy and Quality: Focus on Chronic Illness Care and Patient Safety

Abstract

Despite a heightened focus on improving quality, recent studies have suggested that children only receive half of the indicated preventive, acute, or chronic care. Two major areas in need of improvement are chronic illness care and prevention of medical errors. Recently, health literacy has been identified as an important and potentially ameliorable factor for improving quality of care. Studies of adults have documented that lower health literacy is independently associated with poorer understanding of prescriptions and other medical information and worse chronic disease knowledge, self-management behaviors, and clinical outcomes. There is also growing evidence to suggest that health literacy is important in pediatric safety and chronic illness care. Adult studies have suggested that addressing literacy can lead to improved patient knowledge, behaviors, and outcomes. Early studies in the field of pediatrics have shown similar promise. There are significant opportunities to evaluate and demonstrate the importance of health literacy in improving pediatric quality of care. Efforts to address health literacy should be made to apply the 6 Institute of Medicine aims for quality-care that is safe, effective, patient centered, timely, efficient, and equitable. Efforts should also be made to consider the distinct nature of pediatric care and address the "4 D's" unique to child health: the developmental change of children over time; dependency on parents or adults; differential epidemiology of child health; and the different demographic patterns of children and their families. The views presented in this article are those of the authors, not the organizations with which they are affiliated.www.pediatrics.org/cgi

Assessment of Readability, Understandability, and Completeness of Pediatric Hospital Medicine Discharge Instructions

“…Caregivers with limited literacy skills may struggle to navigate complex health systems, understand medical instructions and anticipatory guidance, perform child care and selfcare tasks, and understand issues related to consent, medical authorization, and risk communication. 17 Although readability is important, other factors also correlate with comprehension and execution of discharge tasks. 18 Information must be understandable, or presented in a way that makes sense and can inform appropriate action.…”

Unit of Measurement Used and Parent Medication Dosing Errors

“…Pediatrics 2014;134:e354-e361 8,9 Ultimately, this information is incorporated by the parent, contributing to his or her knowledge of the correct dose and ability to accurately administer the medication to their child.…”

“…18,20 Parents with low health literacy (HL) and limited English proficiency, who are at particular risk for making medication errors, may especially benefit from a move to a consistent, single unit system. 6,7,9 To date, there has been limited study of the degree to which use of specific units of measurement promotes or reduces the rate of parent errors and whether this relationship is mediated by nonstandard instrument use or varies by HL and language.…”

The Role of Media Socialization Agents in Increasing Obesity Health Literacy Among Malaysian Youth

“…Moreover, it is also an important mediator of health outcomes (Berkman et al, 2011). People with low health literacy are found to be less healthy and also to be less capable to face with chronic diseases, to have less knowledge about health, and to face obstacles in reading and understanding information on medicine packages or hospital forms (Davis et al, 2006;Peterson et al, 2011;Rothman et al, 2009). The investigation of health information seeking behavior among Malaysians provides a better understanding on the level of knowledge, attitudes and practices among respondent particularly patients with chronic diseases (Mohammad Rezal Hamzah et al, 2015).…”