In: Nursing
Mrs. Walker is an 87 year old widow recently discharged from the hospital following an incident of high blood glucose related to a chronic diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes. She has returned for a follow up visit with her physician who asked you to join him/her during the examination as part of the health care team. Mrs. Walker lives alone and has a daughter who lives 30 miles away and visits once or twice a week. She no longer drives but does have a church family to help her attend religious events weekly. She tells the health care team that she has been “a little dizzy sometimes” but did read the pamphlet about how to manage her diabetes after she was discharged from the hospital 4 days ago and thinks she is doing “ok”. She brought her medications with her and it was noted during medication reconciliation that she has not taken her blood pressure medication since she was discharged from the hospital. When asked about her medications she answered that she was “not sure if that was the blue one or the big white one”. Her insulin pen is also full although she states that she is injecting herself “at least 4 times a day”.
Answer the following questions fully:
Health literacy issues associated with higher mortality. health
education intervention and followup adherence help for
post-hospital followup adherence for the patient. lack of health
literacy causes poor health outcome. Patients with limited health
literacy have trouble reading and understanding food lables,
measuring medication, identifying medication and slef care
instruction. it causes underutilization of preventive resources
that cause health disparities. when family lives for away from the
older people and the older people lives alone they can not come for
a followup visit and they can not adhere to followup medications.
health literacy screening in clinical care
benefit older adults that improve health literacy, improved health
care decisions, and improve health status.
patient-centered communication, clear communication technique,
using education materials, medication clear labeling,
self-management support programs improve health outcomes that
prevent health literacy issues.
patient low health literacy cause less familiar with medical
concepts and vocabulary and the patient will ask fewer questions.
low understanding of medical instructions from physician cause poor
health literacy and make negative health outcomes. clear
communication and effective strategic for teaching about health
literacy raise their awareness about health literacy. educators
should empower their trainees how to teach them and communicate
clearly with patients.
Assess the patient's understand before providing information and
explain clearly using plain language.
avoid medical terms, vague terms and medical jargon, and other lay
terms in health literacy, explain the key points, and make
important. use an open ended approach. instruct the patient to
repeat the sentence and informaiton.
open ended question will be valauble to obtain accurate informaiton
"what questions do you have?", "what problems broght you to the
hospital today?"