Health Literacy Paper

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Health literacy is the degree to which people obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services in order to make appropriate health decisions. Low levels of health literacy are correlated to poor health outcomes such as increase health disparities, difficulty understanding health information, exacerbation of chronic illness, higher readmission to hospitals and difficulty utilizing available health resources. Communicating with the elderly in a way that they can understand and utilize health information is the professional, ethical and legal responsibility of the nurse. In this paper, I will discuss strategies that I as a nursing student can utilize in my future clinical practice to assess health literacy in older patients …show more content…

I will utilize the nursing process to break down the steps a nurse can use when promoting health literacy among elderly that nurse can utilize in practice when caring for elderly patients. They include evaluating patient's literacy levels, determining factors that contribute to low levels of health literacy, setting realistic goals, implementing effective and relative interventions and evaluation patient's understanding of information given. The Health literacy measurement tools. The initial steps would be to assess patient's literacy levels. Currently, there are over 100 literacy measures tools available to health professionals. I have mentioned the most widely used that nurse can use to evaluate the patient's literacy levels. I am going to use are Health literacy measurement tools
REALIM: Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine.
NVS: Newest Vital sign gives people an ice cream labels to read and ask them six questions about the label.
HALS: Health Activity Literacy Scale.
TOFHIlA: Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults ask them to fill in the blanks with appropriate words. The next step is diagnosing. At this step, you must determine your patient's literacy level. Poor health literacy can be hidden and difficult to recognize. Many older patients may be in denial regarding reading and understanding health information. Other

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