Health Literacy – Becoming a Health Literate Practice

This programme focuses on how becoming a more health literate practice can help not only your patients achieve better health outcomes, but also how you as a practice can be more effective, efficient and enhance your reputation.

Health literacy is about helping patients to understand health information – but also equally importantly helping them to act on that information.  There are two sides to the coin when it comes to health literacy.  It is not just about patients, it is about how we as healthcare providers support our patients.

Questions to ask ourselves:

• When our patients are invited for appointments, how sure are we that they know what to do, where to go and when?
• When they arrive with us, do they know where to go and what to do?
• When they are with us, are we sure that we are being understood, and that they feel part of decision-making?
• When our patients go home, how sure are we that they know what to do to improve or manage their health condition?

What are the benefits of “getting it right?”

People are more likely to:

• Attend appointments on time
• Navigate the sometimes complex physical environment in healthcare settings
• Feel involved in decisions about their health
• Adhere to medication correctly
• Adopt behaviours to manage their health condition or prevent other conditions from developing
• Speak highly of the care that they have received from your organisation

The workshop will be delivered as a virtual session.  The session is highly interactive, with plenty of activities to help attendees engage fully with the subject.

SPACER

Objectives

Workshop Outcomes:

This training session will enable attendees to:

• Understand what health literacy is – specifically in relation to the GP practice environment
• Know the health literacy levels within the areas they serve
• Empathise with those people who have lower levels of health literacy
• Understand what the benefits of improved health literacy are to both patients and to GP practices and also be able to explain what these benefits are to others.
• Improve their communication skills with patients who use their GP practices
• Work more effectively with people who have poor health literacy, through the use of health literacy tools, such as ‘teach back’, ‘chunk and check’, and writing for understanding and action.
• Understand what a health literacy-friendly organisation looks like and consider the steps required to become one