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Nurse Overestimation of Patients' Health Literacy

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posted on 2016-04-01, 00:00 authored by Carolyn Dickens, Bruce L. Lambert, Terese Cromwell, Mariann R. Piano
Patient education and effective communication are core elements of the nursing profession; therefore, awareness of a patient’s HL is integral to patient care, safety, education and counseling. Several prior studies have suggested health care providers overestimate their patient’s health literacy. In this study we compare inpatient nurses' estimate of their patient’s health literacy to the patient’s health literacy using the Newest Vital Sign as the health literacy measurement. A total of 65 patients and 30 nurses were enrolled in this trial. Our results demonstrate that nurses incorrectly identify patients with low HL and overestimates outnumber underestimates 6 to 1. The results reinforce previous evidence that health care providers overestimate a patient’s HL. The overestimation of a patient’s HL by nursing personnel may contribute to the widespread problem of poor health outcomes and hospital readmission rates.

Funding

This project was supported by grant number U194S021093 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The authors thank Mike Wolf, Ph.D., and Stacy Bailey, Ph.D., for their advice and expertise.

History

Publisher

Taylor and Francis

Language

  • en_US

issn

1081-0730

Issue date

2013-10-04

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