The Importance of Health Literacy

The 2 things that stood out to me the most from this sessions classwork were during Professor Flick’s video lecture.  They were two things that I have seen in my life and was able to reflect on during this lesson.  The first was that health literacy is dependent on navigating the healthcare system and understanding mathematical concepts such as probability and risk.  When I was in high school my brother got really sick and had to go to many doctor’s appointments until he was able to have surgery and recover.  Although my brother is older than I am and at that timed lived in a different city, he ended up having to come home for all of his appointments.  My parents would accompany him to his visits  and you could be sure that my mom had a list of questions she was ready to ask.  This may have seemed annoying to my brother or the doctors but to her it was important and in the end allowed us to be better educated on what was going on and have solid information.  This knowledge also helped us to understand his probability and risk with his illness and with his surgery.  We had a sufficient amount of understanding to make us feel as comfortable as we could with the situation at hand but that is not the case for many people.  I think this is so important to point out because as occupational therapists we will be educated and have a higher level of knowledge than many of our patients.  It is important that we remember that and try our hardest to give them all of the information they need.  We should give answers to questions that may not have been asked because our clients may be too nervous to ask or not even know the correct question to ask. 

The other thing that stood out to me was the “ask me what works best for me, because I am screenable.”  I have been a tech at a physical therapy clinic for many years and although it is not entirely the same concept as what we saw in the video I have discovered that it is so important to ask the patients what works best for them.  When I first started working as a tech I was sometimes nervous to ask patients questions because I was much younger than many of them.  Many of them looked at me as a child and did not believe that I knew what I was doing if I asked them a question about their body or what was comfortable when we were setting up for ultrasounds or other activities.  Then I discovered that the more questions I asked the patients, the more information I knew about them, and the more comfortable I could make them feel.  I don’t know what other people are feeling and I am not a mind reader so I had to learn to be confident in asking questions because that resulted in me having better relationships with the patients and being able to make them feel more comfortable.