Though It May Be Too Early to Start Shopping for a Halloween Costume...

It's never too early for LCCT to start gearing up for October's National Health Literacy Month! You might be thinking, "do they realize that October is almost five months away?" The answer is yes, but don't worry. We do have a reason! We've got big plans for Health Literacy Month and want to get everyone involved, so we're loading up the bandwagon starting now! That means there's no better time than the present for you to tell us about what you’ve been doing, or what you’d like to do to improve communication between Central Texas patients and their healthcare providers.

Your efforts are making a difference in our community, so don’t let them go unrecognized. No effort is too small! Tell us what you're up to and let us promote your commitment to improved health communication during National Health Literacy Month!

Here’s what we need to know: What are you doing to combat low health literacy? What projects or discussions has your organization started to address the problem in our community? Do you want to join the health literacy movement, but don’t know how to get started?

Comment and tell us about it! Let's put our heads together to make this Health Literacy the biggest Central Texas has ever seen!

30 Seconds in the Life of a Low Health Literate Individual

1) What has your physician recommended for you?
2) What does this procedure involve?
3) How are you going to prepare for the procedure?


Now, think about how that felt? Did it take you a second to figure out what you were reading? Did you have to look back at the short paragraph in order to answer the questions at the end? If you struggled with this exercise, maybe you will be able to better empathize with the the 90 million low health-literate Americans who face frustrations such as this on a daily basis. The average medical form, whether it be a pamphlet on how to eat nutritiously or a patient consent form, is written at the 10th grade level. The average American is reading at the 8th grade level. Herein lies one of the major problems in our healthcare system.

What can you do? If you're an adult ed instructor, incorporate health-related information into your lesson plans. Don't know how? No problem, we provide half-day workshops on how to teach health literacy in the adult ed classroom! If you're a healthcare provider or advocate, talk to your supervisors about the patient-friendliness of the materials that you provide your clients. Also, think about the care you provide low health literate clients...are they REALLY understanding everything you tell them? We provide trainings on patient-provider communication in order to improve patient-compliance. Together we can begin to increase the health literacy of our community.

A Health Literacy Coordinator's Stay at the Hospital

I spent most of last week in "one of the top 100 hospitals in America" at the bedside of my girlfriend who was in for a cholecystectomy. A WHAT??? Oh, sorry. She had her gall bladder removed.

"Cholecystectomy," that's a new word I learned last week, along with about 25 others such as intravenous, intraoperative, supine, phenergran, and on and on. Being that I have spent more hours in the past year researching and working with health literacy than sleeping, I felt well prepared and empowered as my gf's patient advocate. We made a list of questions upon checking into the hospital and continually added to it over the next 4 days. We were relentless in our question asking; getting opinions from everyone from the surgeon to the cleaning lady.

At one point we actually made a nurse feel quite uncomfortable as she was struggling to explain the anti-nausea medicine, phenergran, to her drowsy, scared patient. I was persistent in my repetition of, "Wait, what does that mean?" and "Sclerosed veins? I don't understand, can you tell us what the side effects are in Laymen's terms?" At all of my pestering, the nurse dejectedly admitted, "I'm not a very good teacher. I know what I'm doing but I've never been a good teacher."

The hospital at which we stayed has the mission to "strive to provide exceptional care to every patient every day with a spirit of warmth, friendliness and personal pride." I believe them. Although striving to provide this exceptional, patient-centered care, and regardless of their ranking as a top 100 hospital, my girlfriend and I saw HUGE room for improvement. I hope I see those direct-care staff again someday and I hope that when that time comes, that they are sitting in on one of the Literacy Coalition's Health Literacy Trainings. I'm proud to provide a product that drastically improves patient-provider communication and patient-care, even at a top 100 hospital.