Essay On Physical Therapy And Health Literacy

Physical Therapy and Health Literacy Health literacy is defined as “the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions” (Bilek-Sawhney, Reicherter, Yatta, & Duranko, 2012, p. 1). Individual with low health literacy are often individuals with language barriers, the poor, the homeless, the elderly, and people with medical problems. When a patient has low health literacy they have problems with preventive, diagnosis, and medical interventions, which leads to an increase in health care costs (Bilek-Sawhney, Reicherter, Yatta, & Duranko, 2012, p. 2). In this journal, the educational materials that were sent home with physical therapy …show more content…
This meant that the patient was unable to comprehend the material, which resulted in the patient not doing exercises at home and slowing the process down of them getting better. I agree that physical therapists need to be more aware of their patient’s literacy level, so that they can provide the best care for each of their patients. The first appointment that the physical therapist has with the patient needs to be used for evaluation of the patient’s health literacy. A way to evaluate this is to have them explain what they are being seen for and have them read a short excerpt about their medical condition to make sure that they can read and understand. Another way to know that the patient understands the educational material is to have the patient read and demonstrate the material that will be sent home with them before leaving the medical office. This will allow the physical therapist to know that the patient can do these exercises at home, which will get the patient in a better condition in a timely manner. Some other ways to make the educational material easier to read is to use pictures of the exercises being done, use short syllabus words, and use only two to five words (Bilek-Sawhney,