Health Literacy Practices and Educational Competencies for Health Professionals: A Consensus Study

Abstract

Health care professionals often lack adequate knowledge about health literacy and the skills needed to address low health literacy among patients and their caregivers. Many promising practices for mitigating the effects of low health literacy are not used consistently. Improving health literacy training for health care professionals has received increasing emphasis in recent years. The development and evaluation of curricula for health professionals has been limited by the lack of agreed-upon educational competencies in this area. This study aimed to identify a set of health literacy educational competencies and target behaviors, or practices, relevant to the training of all health care professionals. The authors conducted a thorough literature review to identify a comprehensive list of potential health literacy competencies and practices, which they categorized into 1 or more educational domains (i.e., knowledge, skills, attitudes) or a practice domain. The authors stated each item in operationalized language following Bloom's Taxonomy. The authors then used a modified Delphi method to identify consensus among a group of 23 health professions education experts representing 11 fields in the health professions. Participants rated their level of agreement as to whether a competency or practice was both appropriate and important for all health professions students. A predetermined threshold of 70% agreement was used to define consensus. After 4 rounds of ratings and modifications, consensus agreement was reached on 62 out of 64 potential educational competencies (24 knowledge items, 27 skill items, and 11 attitude items), and 32 out of 33 potential practices. This study is the first known attempt to develop consensus on a list of health literacy practices and to translate recommended health literacy practices into an agreed-upon set of measurable educational competencies for health professionals. Further work is needed to prioritize the competencies and practices in terms of relative importance.

Health Literacy amongst Health Professional University Students: A Study Using the Health Literacy Questionnaire

“…While the importance of incorporating health literacy in health professional curricula has received growing attention [25,29,54], there is limited evidence about the gaps in the health literacy knowledge amongst student groups. Our results suggest that different student groups have different health literacy profiles, indicating that a blanket approach to health literacy education may not be appropriate.…”

Pharmacist Behavior Changes Following a Medication Counseling Training Program Targeting Teach-Back and Plain Language

“…Studies have identified low rates of formal training in health literate knowledge or communication skills for medical students and an unclear extent of training in this area for other health profession students. [11][12][13][14] Additionally, inconsistent implementation of health literacy practices across disciplines has been identified. 15 Often pharmacist competency development or training is designed as continuing education programming.…”

How could health information be improved? Recommended actions from the Victorian Consultation on Health Literacy

“…building skills in recognising what makes quality information) and may address some elements of the emerging issue of health literacy competencies for health professionals. 37,38 Other health systems have taken this approach 39 and, increasingly, health communication interventions are evolving to meet standards, 40 so lessons from these experiences could inform the approach adopted in Australia.…”