Knowing health literacy levels of older patients and their caregivers is important because caregivers assist patients in the administration of medications, manage daily health care tasks, and help make health services utilization decisions. The authors examined the association of health literacy levels between older Hispanic patients and their caregivers among 174 patient-caregiver dyads enroll...

BACKGROUND Effective use of a patient decision aid (PtDA) can be affected by the user's health literacy and the PtDA's characteristics. Systematic reviews of the relevant literature can guide PtDA developers to attend to the health literacy needs of patients. The reviews reported here aimed to assess: METHODS We reviewed literature for evidence relevant to these two aims. When high-quality sy...

BACKGROUND In the United States, it is estimated that 40% of adults utilize complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies. Recently, national surveys report that over 90 million adults have inadequate health literacy. To date, no study has assessed health literacy and its effect on CAM use. The primary objective of this study was to assess the relationship between health literacy and C...

Low health literacy in patients and families has been called a silent epidemic. Although there is a great deal of literature to assist nurses to address health literacy problems, little has focused on overcoming low health literacy in critical care. This article provides a definition of health literacy, explores how Baker's health literacy model can be applied to the critical care environment u...

BACKGROUND Chronic disease is the leading global health threat and impairs patients' health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Low health literacy is linked with chronic diseases prevalence and poor HRQoL. However, the interaction of health literacy with chronic disease on HRQoL remains unknown. Therefore, we examined how health literacy might modify the association between chronic disease and th...

OBJECTIVE To assess health literacy in an adult tertiary care otolaryngology clinic population and to explore potential determinants of inadequate health literacy. STUDY DESIGN Cross-sectional study. SETTING Tertiary care otolaryngology clinic. SUBJECTS AND METHODS The study population included all adult patients treated at 3 of Stanford University's adult otolaryngology clinic sites betw...

BACKGROUND Both financial literacy (managing personal finances) and health literacy (managing personal health) become increasingly important for older adults, potentially impacting their quality of life. Resources in these constructs of literacy tend to be distinct, although the skills and decision-making involved overlap as financial issues impact healthcare choices. Thus the primary purpose o...

medication errors and adverse drug events can bring about hospitalization, permanent injury, or death. patients due to lack of adequate understanding of instruction may unintentionally misuse a prescribed medicine. the aims of the study were to examine whether patients with low back pain were correctly able to understand physician's instructions regarding drug use and also to identify influenci...

OBJECTIVE To provide insight into the level of health literacy among chronic disease patients in the Netherlands, to identify subgroups with low literacy and to examine the associations between health literacy and self-management. METHODS Self-report questionnaires were sent to a nationwide sample of 1.341 chronic disease patients. The Dutch Functional Communicative and Critical Health Litera...