Patient at Community Clinics: Recommendations for Advancing Health Literacy

Department

Nursing

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Patient Education and Counseling

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed to assess community clinics in enhancing health literacy among underserved patients. We focus on patient-provider communication at these clinics to understand how this communication may foster or hinder health literacy and how the organizational health literacy of clinics may be improved.
Methods: We surveyed 303 patients at three community clinics to evaluate providers’ communication behaviors related to health literacy. The city health department entered surveys into SurveyMonkey™ and analyzed them using Stata/SE™. The analysis included frequencies of all variables for all participants and by clinic. Qualitative methods were also used.
Results: Community clinics are trusted care sources; however, around 13 % of patients reported rarely or never being encouraged to ask questions, 20 % reported providers spoke too fast, and 17 % reported that medical staff were not always informative. Patients needing an interpreter reported more communication problems than those not requiring one, making these results more salient.
Conclusions: Community clinics serving low-income patients can enhance personal and organizational health literacy by improving patient-provider communication such as active listening, encouraging patients to ask questions, and addressing language barriers.
Practice implications: Advancing health literacy impacts community and public health initiatives, improves health disparities, builds patient-provider trust, and improves health systems.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2024.108618

Publication Date

12-20-2024

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