When it comes to managing chronic diseases, health literacy is a significant factor to consider. Chronic disease management becomes difficult with patients having low health literacy. For them, navigating and understanding a complex healthcare system is overwhelming. With the proper training provided by healthcare professionals to patients, the literacy level can significantly be improved.
What is health literacy?
Health literacy is your ability to understand information regarding your health. Health literacy is referred to the degree to which individuals can find, understand and use information and healthcare services to make health-related decisions for themselves and others.
The factors of low health literacy
Low health literacy can create a communication barrier between patients and healthcare providers. Below are the few factors that contribute to low health literacy:
- Poverty
- Culture
- Language
- Education
- Age
- Access to resources (technology)
- Having a health disease that needs complex self-care
How vital is essential health literacy?
Understanding health information and care services vastly impacts one’s health outcome. Your literacy level determines your ability to access the healthcare system, use preventative services and share your personal health information with caregivers. Having good health literacy enables you to:
- Understand your choices about the course of treatment, doctors and other items
- Answer questions and identify your health conditions
- Stick to the treatment plan given by the clinician
- Decide which healthcare services are best for you and your needs
How to improve health literacy among patients?
Improving health literacy needs one to take definitive actions. For example, if you want to improve health literacy, do not be afraid to ask questions to your healthcare professionals. Apart from that, you may want to ask for handouts. They are helpful tools to help you understand detailed information regarding health conditions or services.
Never believe everything written on the internet. You also want to try repeating what your doctor tells you using your own words. Thus, you can have an opportunity to clarify things that you may have misunderstood or discover anything you may have misheard.
To conclude
Prevention is the very foundation of health and wellbeing. Having a greater understanding of the impact of health literacy is key. Good health literacy is fundamental to the successful management of chronic diseases. Several studies demonstrate the correlation between poor health status and low health literacy. The lack of health literacy leads to the underuse of preventive resources like vaccinations and routine check-ups. In addition, it impacts a patient’s understanding of healthcare providers’ instructions on medication that could affect the management of chronic health conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes or asthma.
At Drayton Medical Centre, we encourage patients to take the first step towards wellbeing. Our efficient doctors are doing their best to help them manage chronic conditions. Contact our healthcare team today if you have any queries related to your health or routine check-up.