Quantifying word use to study health literacy in doctor-patient communication.
Summary of "Quantifying word use to study health literacy in doctor-patient communication."
Most health literacy research to date has assessed health literacy using either general reading tests or text-based appraisals of reading and numeracy skills, yet the definition of health literacy includes domains beyond reading ability. Effective oral communication between doctor and patient is an important component of health literacy, but only recently have efforts been made to develop measures that tap into domains beyond those that can be assessed with text-based measures. Focusing on oral exchange, this article describes computer-assisted approaches to quantifying word use and the development of three word-use measures that can be used to study health literacy in transcripts of clinical encounters. The measures can be used to assess either the expressed literacy level of patients or the aural literacy demands made by doctors. Importantly, the computer-assisted quantitative measures described here make it possible for word use to be analyzed at a level of detail that human raters would be hard pressed to attain.
Affiliation
Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Journal Details
This article was published in the following journal.
Name: Journal of health communication
ISSN: 1087-0415
Pages: 590-602
Links
- PubMed Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20812122
- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2010.499592
Medical and Biotech [MESH] Definitions
Health Communication
The transfer of information from experts in the medical and public health fields to patients and the public. The study and use of communication strategies to inform and influence individual and community decisions that enhance health.
Health Literacy
Degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.
Electronic Health Records
Media that facilitate transportability of pertinent information concerning patient's illness across varied providers and geographic locations. Some versions include direct linkages to online consumer health information that is relevant to the health conditions and treatments related to a specific patient.
Interdisciplinary Communication
Communication, in the sense of cross-fertilization of ideas, involving two or more academic disciplines (such as the disciplines that comprise the cross-disciplinary field of bioethics, including the health and biological sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences and law). Also includes problems in communication stemming from differences in patterns of language usage in different academic or medical disciplines.
Refusal To Treat
Refusal of the health professional to initiate or continue treatment of a patient or group of patients. The refusal can be based on any reason. The concept is differentiated from PATIENT REFUSAL OF TREATMENT see TREATMENT REFUSAL which originates with the patient and not the health professional.
PubMed Articles
Improving health literacy is one key to buoying our nation's troubled health care system. As system-level health literacy improvement strategies take the stage among national priorities for health car...
BACKGROUND: Low health literacy (HL) is associated with poor healthcare outcomes; mechanisms for these associations remain unclear. OBJECTIVE: To elucidate how HL influences patients' interest in part...
Health Literacy and Ophthalmic Patient Education.
In 1997, Ebrahimzadeh, Davalos, and Lee wrote in this journal that only 32% of the ophthalmic patient educational materials reviewed were written at or below the recommended eighth-grade reading level...
Health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand the health information needed to make appropriate health decisions. The health behaviors of Afri...
Low Health Literacy Associates with Increased Mortality in ESRD.
Limited health literacy is common in the United States and associates with poor clinical outcomes. Little is known about the effect of health literacy in patients with advanced kidney disease. In this...
Clinical Trials
This study is being carried out to see if patients make the lifestyle changes or take their medication as instructed by their doctor during their visit as a result of the T.H.T. patient-ed...
A Patient Advocate and Literacy-Based Treatment of Asthma
Half of US adults have no more than basic reading and numerical skills. A consequence is inadequate health literacy, which is associated with unsatisfactory patient-provider communication...
Oral Health in Adults: Association With Attitude, Literacy and Psychological Factors
The purpose of this study to investigate attitude, oral health literacy and psychological factors in order to evaluate if these factors are important for oral health in adults. The hypoth...
Improving Functional Health Literacy in Older Veterans
The objective of this two parallel component study is to develop interventions for the visual and cognitive related health literacy disabilities of older veterans. The first component will...
Assessment of Comskil Training Through Videorecording and Patient Surveys
At Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center the investigators want to provide the best care to their patients. One way to do this is to evaluate the ways that doctors communicate with patien...
