Health Care Reflection

For this unit, I was able to make better use of outlining techniques and course materials. As a result, writing the paper was a much more flowing process and yielded a more organized paper. I learned a great deal about determining how well others will view and understand a piece of health care information and what they need to be able to do so. I could still use improvement in making final decisions on one piece, but it has been getting easier.

By using the course materials more, it was easier to form a checklist of sorts on what information needed to be covered. Knowing what a good health care website would provide based on the thorough reading of the paper from the American Family Physician on health literacy and using the guidelines from the Office of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention for the layout of the site itself simplified the analysis of the site I chose. Before, I had not used the course materials as a guide, but read them and then kept them in mind. For this paper, I used the notes from those pieces to guide my analysis. I

believe that this greatly improved the organization, flow, and content of the paper. It also enabled me to more easily locate and choose a web site to analyze for accessibility. I did multiple web searches, using phrases like “what to expect physical therapy” or “physical therapy appointment” to find relevant sites. I was then able to use a checklist of good and bad web site traits to eliminate sites that had too many problems and no strong points.
Another area that has improved is my outline method.

The previous method was not as detail oriented as it should have been. Although the main points were supported, there was not enough specificity to the piece of work that I was analyzing. This led to a lack of true support for the conclusion about that piece. This time, however, I was careful to not make a statement without showing some specific point on the website that showed the reason for that statement. With the added details and examples, it was easier to connect the concepts of how a writing sample should be for maximum accessibility to the specific site that was chosen. I could basically write straight from the outline. Knowing what exactly needed to go with each section made the organization of the paper more natural. This more detailed outline is another trend that I will continue to use as it can make the entire process of writing and organizing the paper

easier.
While the organization was easier, I still had some difficulty with making a final determination on the website. Most of the health care websites I found were in the grey area between accessible to patients and not at all suitable. Before this class, I had never considered the amount of work that it takes to properly make a website and present health care information in a way that was understandable to everyone. I certainly didn’t know that the average reading level in our country was so low. What I believe surprised me the most was the severity of fear experienced by patients that their illiteracy be revealed. That some of them had organs removed without their informed consent due to this fear shows the true need for the consideration of all patients’ level of understanding.
This need and the ways in which to address it are the primary lessons I hope to take from this unit. In addition, the outlining process that is more detail-oriented is extremely useful as it allowed me to write the paper, more or less, from the outline. I also hope to take the checklist method that I used to analyze the website to use for further pieces when determining how well those with low health literacy will understand.