Health psychology - Health literacy Flashcards
Health literacy
definiton
The degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions
Low health literacy
characteristics
- Lack of knowledge about health and disease
- Less healthy lifestyle (smoking, overweight, less participation in screening and preventive health care)
- difficulties in judgement when to go to the doctor
- Less conscious choice for practictioner or health care institution
- Difficulties in communication with health care professional
- Difficulties with self-management
Poorer health due to low health literacy
examples
More:
* Astma
* COPD
* Diabetes
* Cancer
* Heart and vascular disease
* Psychological problems
What are the three types of health literacy?
- Functional health literacy
- Interactive health literacy (communicative health literacy)
- Critical health literacy
What is functional health literacy?
Basic skills in reading, writing, and calculating
Functional health literacy is needed to:
Examples
- Read medicine labels
- Read consent forms
- Keep appointment schedules
- Read written information provided by health care professionals
- Find the way in hospitals
What is interactive/ communicative health literacy?
Skills to
* participate actively
* to extract health information
* derive meaning from it
* and apply to changing circumstances
Interactive/ communicative health literacy is needed to:
Examples
- Search online for information
- Ask questions to doctor
- Discuss health problems with a professional
- Apply information to your own life
- Distinguish major and minor issues
What is critical health literacy?
- To critically appraise information or advice and the use of information to exert/ gain control over own health
Critical health literacy is needed to:
- Make informed health decisions
- Take responsibility over own health
- Appraise the reliability of obtained health information
Characteristics of people with low health literacy in the Netherlands
- Slightly more often men
- Low education
- ≥ 65 years old
- Bad/ moderate perceived health
What are tasks that need certain levels of cancer health literacy?
Examples
= Disease specific
* making diagnostic and treatment based decisions
* Discussing succes rates of chemotherapy with doctor
* Discussing 5 year survival rates with doctor
* Distinguish credible medical evidence from myths
* Adhere to medication
Behavior specific health literacy: food literacy
(voedselvaardigheden)
- Healthy budgeting
- Food planning
- Healthy comparisons
- Healthy food storage
- Food preparation
- Social and mindful eating
- Smart snack behavior
- Healthy coping and resilience
Identifying patients with limited health literacy
- Exuses: “I forgot my glasses”
- Incomplete registration forms
- Frequently missed appointments
- Non-compliance
How to take into account limited health literacy (health care provider)
- Avoid difficult terminology
* Use ‘side effects instead of ‘adverse reaction’
* Use ‘low sugar’ instead of ‘hypoglycemia’ - Use adequate visuals
- Teach back method
* Confirming if your message to the patient is understood
* Asking patients to explain in their own words what they need to know or do
(Indicates how well you communicated, it is not a test of the patient)
