Patient Numeracy? Don’t Count on It

Abstract

Low levels of patient numeracy are pervasive, yet patients are expected to use basic math skills to maintain health, avoid ill health, and make important health decisions. This article summarizes what we know about best practices when communicating numeracy-based information to patients. We offer advice to home health nurses faced with challenges of caring for patients with low numeracy and who are responsible for their health and safety that require quantitative reasoning. Comprehending statistical data is difficult and counterintuitive for many people (and experts), and we offer examples of widely misunderstood formats of quantitative information but clarify them in ways that will benefit the practicing home health nurse. We conclude that patients need help understanding and using numbers while nurses need help explaining them.