¶ … Health Literacy
CRITIQUE OF CONCEPT ANALYSIS (HEALTH LITERACY)
Significance of Concept to Presenter
Health literacy is very important to me because the concept is vital when it comes to health care in general specifically in nursing. It has a great impact on the patient's capability to understand and process information necessary for optimal health. As a nurse, it is important to me that I am aware of my patient's literacy level for me to render care suitable for that patient because I am aware of the importance and the direct influence that health literacy has on the patients' health status and experience. The ability for the patient to understand the information I provide is vital to their health outcome and well-being. Asking the patient about their educational level happens to be one of the admission questions that we ask while completing admission database. In addition, health literacy has an influence on the patient's self-care ability especially when it comes to managing chronic conditions. It is crucial in prescriptions, diagnosis, monitoring, evaluation, and assessment of the status of health at any level. Therefore, health literacy plays a critical role in decision-making and management of the patient. Health literacy makes work easier; it helps me to provide my service effectively. If the patient is acquainted with some knowledge about their health, this process will be the easiest for me. In fact, delivery of the best service will not be an option but a reality.
Significance of Concept to profession
Health literacy is also fundamental to the profession of nursing because majority of the care we provide to the patient is through education. So, we ourselves need to be health literate in order to provide our patients' with accurate information. As obligated by the nursing ethics and professionalism, we are expected to communicate with clarity and purpose to the patient in order to address their needs at hand. Moreover, health literacy will enable nurses to acquire, understand, and inculcate the information needed to promote health. Health literacy plays a key role in promoting the delivery of service and thereby ensures safety and well-being of our patients at any point in the field of nursing. In healthcare, it is important that the patient understands the treatment prescribed in its entirety, towards better health outcomes.
b. Purpose of Analysis
The purpose of this analysis is to show how imperative health literacy is in the over all health status of the patient. It promotes effectiveness and reliability of the services offered. For health literacy to be effective, nurses have to be cognizant of the language and the educational level of the patient. For example, it is unrealistic to expect a patient with grade 3 health education level to understand college level instructions. Understanding this important issue would help nurses provide patients with information in a language that would promote compliance level and overall health outcome.
III. History
a. History of concept in nursing.
The history of health literacy can be traced back to the time of shift from the oral culture to the written culture practiced by the early Egyptians and Greeks (Murray, 2000). The term 'health literacy' was used for the first time in a paper in 1974 addressing the need to introduce health education in schools in the U.S.A. Amongst the first to identify health literacy and pursue it academically as regards the patients' inadequacy to understand health related documentation were Leonard and Cecelia Doak and Jane Root in the eighties. Health literacy as a concept has since evolved and gained importance. In the 1980s and 1990s, many efforts were put into trying to establish literacy skills in the health sector. Various studies conducted proved that there was a difficulty among the patients to comprehend the health education materials. These research studies made use of traditional measures of literacy like word recognition and comprehension. No research took up health literacy as a unique matter that deserved more in-depth research and analysis. The widely accepted TOFHLA (Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults) was devised for a two-year seminal study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation only in 1992. This innovative step was followed by AMA's (American Medical Association) initiative to explore and investigate different facets of health education and literacy in 1997. Even now, scholarly work is rare on health literacy addressing the needs of those in nursing, though the correspondence between reading ability and health literacy is explored frequently (Miller & Bodie, 1994; Brez & Taylor, 1997; Fisher, 1999; French & Larrabee, 1999).
Presenter's beliefs about the concept
Before reading this literature, the concept of health...
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