Health Literacy: Effective Communication In Health Care

Within a culturally diverse population in Australia, especially for Indigenous groups than non-indigenous population, low level of health literacy has been considered as a negative factor that impacting on the delivery of adequate care and health professionals’ performances on medical treatment. Effective communication is particularly important for the outline of catering high quality, efficient and culturally safe care in a culturally diverse health care system. The health care worker would expect to engage in effective communication to provide safe and culturally appropriate health care and to achieve greater clinical outcomes. This academic essay will examine how health literacy would influence on the delivery of culturally safe health

(2009) examines about how a health literacy level effect on the physician-patient relationship and types of communication used for the interaction between patient and health professionals. Circumstantial factors and difficult to communicate due to speaking different languages and cultural differences, however, could be more impacting on impeding physician and consumer relationship than the poor level of health literacy. For instance, the possibility of ineffective communication would still exist, even if the patient is fluent in English and has not had any issues having a conversation on expressing their concerns. There would also be much higher chance of having unproductive communication, if the health professionals and patient have different cultural upbringing and conceptual knowledge (Lowell et al., 2005; Trudgen, 2000). Not only recognising the barriers explained above, but also there should have another consideration about extended cultural and linguistic impediment to Indigenous populations with ineffective communication skills for accessing health care services. Gould (2008) points out that Aboriginal people have been experiencing a high rate of the wrong diagnosis due to communication dissimilarities, inadequate assessment practices, and cognitive

The health care workers also would have an active application of interpreters to advocate and encourage the understanding of health information in the patient’s first language to facilitate the possible access to available services. Moreover, the successful implementation of the medical intervention and continuous monitoring would essential to enhance health literacy and effective communication, which can strengthen with appropriate resources (Dunbar, Benger & Lowell,