Better, sooner, more convenient health care in Midlands

5 CommunityA focus on health literacysituations. Literacy skills are a critical component in this equation and too many New Zealander’s lackstrong health-literacy skills.Accurately fill out forms that relate to their health care needsMany patients have experienced serious medication errors resulting from their inability to readlabels. To cope with these problems, patients with low literacy rely heavily on oral explanations, visualclues, and demonstrations of tasks to learn new material. Most also use a friend or family member asa surrogate reader.Confidently ask questions of their health teamEncouraging patients to actively manage their own health at the point of contact with theirHealth Team.Use of the patient initiated questions model - “AskMe3”.Use of question templates and formal recording of answers with patients.Flow managers talk to each patient about AskMe3 and ensure that they feel comfortable asking andanswering the questions in the General Practitioner visit.Be confident in their understanding of instructions relating to their medicationPrescriptions the patient can understand.Group visits.Labels on things that you can understand.Follow up from the Integrated Family Health Centre that confirms understanding.Be confident in their ability to understand and follow post visit care plansThe introduction of new best practice models of care for management of long term conditions willplace unrealistic expectations on people with low health literacy levels. A review of randomisedcontrolled trial studies showed that 62% of patients with lower reading skills were unable or unwillingto engage in self-management (Heneghan et. al.: 2006).Most patients forget up to 80% of what their doctor tells them as soon as they leave the office, nearly50% of what they do remember is recalled incorrectly. To care for themselves and participate in theirhealth care, patients must be able to understand and act on information and instructions given tothem by their healthcare providers.Patients must be able to process what is required of them, and clarify if they do not understand.Difficulty in following instructions may result in the wrong medication/amounts taken, incorrecthealth concerns conveyed to family or potentially more health problems and therefore more visits tothe General Practitioner. Patients must be able to retain what is said to them, and be able to retrievethis information when required. This enables them to manage their own health care/medications etc.A Health Team informed of and actively addressing health literacy needsThe compensatory behaviour used by adults with low health literacy combined with the feelings ofembarrassment or shame, make it difficult for the health sector to detect this population group. Onestudy found that most physicians overestimated the level of literacy for individual patients with longterm conditions particularly for minority patients, leading the researchers to conclude that there wasa mismatch between how communication is carried out and understood between physician and thepatient in a clinic visit interaction (Kelly and Haidet: 2007).63