Importance of Health Literacy

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Health literacy is “the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions” (Santana et al., 2021). When patients lack health literacy, it makes it hard for the individual to understand their own medical problems and choose treatments by making an educated decision. The article “Updating Health Literacy for Healthy People 2030: Defining Its Importance for a New Decade in Public Health” talks about an initiative started to help people become more health literate. The initiative that is being developed is pushing for a new way to focus on “individual capabilities but also on an organization’s ability to make health-related information and services equitably accessible and comprehensive” (Santana et al., 2021). Based on the CDC website, patients with low health literacy are more likely to visit an emergency room, have more hospital stays, are less likely to follow treatment plans, and have higher mortality rates (Infographic: Health literacy, 2020). However, “even people who read well and are comfortable using numbers can still face health literacy issues when not being familiar with medical terminology, interpret data and diagnosis, and need to evaluate risks and benefits” (Understanding Health Literacy, 2021). People may be asking why a health literacy problem exists, and that is because patients are receiving information that is too difficult to understand or may have to handle unfamiliar and confusing health services. So how can this issue of health literacy in patients be resolved? Perhaps when a patient is seeking medical help, medical staff can provide simple forms for patients to fill out and help with filling out the forms. The provider can then further explain the patient’s condition and treatment plan, in simple wording with fewer medical terms. As the provider is explaining the condition and treatment plan, a check-in can be performed where the patient is asked if the information is being understood and what needs to be further explained. The patient must be involved in the decision of the treatment plan and explain the risks and benefits that come with the treatment plan. These types of steps being taken when treating a patient will help the patient increase their health literacy and give a sense of involvement when making decisions based on conditions being discussed with the patient.

Several tasks about Health Literacy were completed using the WHO’s COVID Data Tracker to study the trends in COVID-19 vaccine confidence in the United States and justify the COVID-19 vaccination trends based on health literacy factors, evidence-based interventions, and outcomes, and create recommendations that would change the vaccination trends, which can be found here COVID-19 Vaccination Trends Based on Health Literacy. When looking at the WHO’s COVID data tracker the trends in vaccination status and intent on a national level from April 2021 to October 2021, the number of people getting vaccinated slowly and steadily increased, and by October 2021, 80.8% had been vaccinated. Now looking at the behavioral indicators by vaccination status and intent in the US from April 2021 to October 2021, there was also an overall increase in each behavioral indicator by vaccination status and intent. In the article “The mediating role of health literacy on the relationship between health care system distrust and vaccine hesitancy during COVID-19 pandemic” a study was conducted to “explore the mediating role of health literacy on the association between health care system distrust and vaccine hesitancy” (Turhan et al., 2021). This article justifies the COVID-19 trends where the numbers of people wanting to get vaccinated and getting vaccinated are low, although showing increases from April 2021 to October 2021, and people being afraid of getting the vaccine. In the study from this article, it was found that there was a high correlation between the hesitation to get vaccinated and health care system distrust & health literacy (Turhan et al., 2021). The article states that with the healthcare system’s distrust and health literacy driving the vaccine hesitation, a focus needs to be made on the dynamics and complicated factors surrounding the health care system & health literacy to help reduce vaccine hesitancy (Turhan et al., 2021). The article “Viewpoint: Without health literacy, expanded EHR access for patients is pointless” by Hannah Mitchell, touches upon great points that it is important for patients to have health literacy. Without health literacy, patients cannot access or use their personal health information the way it is intended to be used (Mitchell, 2021). Some recommendations that can be given is to help change the vaccination trends by training medical providers to be more informative with their patient’s, constantly checking in with them throughout the informational conversation to ensure that the patient is receiving and understanding the information. Medical providers can also be trained to focus more on including the patient in the decision-making of their treatment. Medical providers can explain each treatment, stating pros and cons as well as their professional recommendation and leaving the final decision to the patient. Lastly, medical providers can also give printed information for patients to take home and read on their own time for more understanding.

A social network analysis in Gephi was conducted to uncover the influential tweets, sources of tweets, and connections among sources of tweets about COVID-19 vaccination that impacts health literacy among users. The learning and results of the Social Network Analysis were documented in a video and can be accessed here Social Network Analysis documented learning and results and the gephi graph can be accessed here Social Network Analysis Gephi Graph . It resulted that the modularity for the social network analysis using the hashtags #covid19 and #covidvaccine is 0.489, which indicates that there is mixing across groups or communities and there are more within-group ties than there are between-group ties. The density for the social network analysis is 0.067, indicating that there are barely any connections among the nodes and that the connections made between the nodes are undirected. If the value would have been closer to 1 it would have indicated that all connections possible between the nodes would have been accomplished and there would be more of a direct network between the nodes. However, the undirected connections made are realized with a density of 6.7%. When looking at the eigenvector centrality, the score is relatively closer to 0 than it is to 1. So, the graph is indicating that most of the nodes in the network analysis have little to no influence on the network. This can be due to its modularity. However, there is one node that shows a high eigenvector centrality of 1, indicating a high influence within the network. The node with the high eigenvector centrality is #covidvaccine.

After the completion of the tasks and learning about Health Literacy, there are critical skills in Nursing Informatics that have been learned based on health literacy and can be implemented in the future. These critical skills in Nursing informatics that were acquired based on the technological competency from the article “Development and Psychometric Testing of the Technological Competency as Caring in Nursing Instrument” by Dax Andrew Parcels and Rozzano C. Locsin were, “nurses must include patients in designing care plans to ensure accuracy and completeness of their care”, “nurses need to value patients as knowledgeable about their own selves and their care”, “competent nurses execute and follow up on tasks and emotions”, and “use creativity in meeting/exceeding patient needs and caring in nursing occurs in shared situations of teaching and learning between nurses, patients, and family members” (Parcells, & Locsin, 2021).

References

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