Ryan John G, Leguen Fermin, Weiss Barry D, Albury Sonya, Jennings Terri, Velez Fulton, Salibi Nadia
Department of Family Medicine.ommunity Health, University of Miami School of Medicine, Miami, FL 33136, USA.
Health Educ Res. 2008 Aug;23(4):603-11. doi: 10.1093/her/cym051. Epub 2007 Sep 22.
If health providers are aware of their patients' literacy skills, they can more appropriately tailor their communication with patients. Few providers, however, assess patient's literacy skills for fear of offending patients, but no research has ever determined if patients object to such assessments. Our objectives were to determine the percentage of patients seen for routine health care that would agree to undergo literacy assessment and if satisfaction of patients differs in practices that perform literacy assessments versus practices that do not. We randomized 20 private and public medical practices to an intervention group that implemented literacy assessments with the Newest Vital Sign and a control group that did not. For intervention practices, we noted the percentage of patients agreeing to undergo the assessment. For both intervention and control practices, we assessed patient satisfaction. Of 289 patients asked to undergo literacy assessment in the intervention practices, 284 (98.3%) agreed to do so, including 125 (46.1%) with low or possibly low literacy skills. There was no difference in satisfaction between the intervention group and the control group. We conclude that patients are willing to undergo literacy assessments during routine office visits and performing such assessments does not decrease patient satisfaction.
如果医疗服务提供者了解患者的读写能力，他们就能更恰当地调整与患者的沟通方式。然而，很少有医疗服务提供者会因为担心冒犯患者而评估患者的读写能力，而且从未有研究确定患者是否会反对这种评估。我们的目标是确定在接受常规医疗保健的患者中，同意接受读写能力评估的患者比例，以及进行读写能力评估的医疗机构与不进行评估的医疗机构中患者的满意度是否存在差异。我们将20家私立和公立医疗诊所随机分为干预组和对照组，干预组采用最新生命体征工具进行读写能力评估，对照组则不进行评估。对于干预组的诊所，我们记录同意接受评估的患者比例。对于干预组和对照组的诊所，我们都评估了患者满意度。在干预组诊所中，有289名患者被要求接受读写能力评估，其中284名（98.3%）同意接受评估，包括125名（46.1%）读写能力较低或可能较低的患者。干预组和对照组的满意度没有差异。我们得出结论，患者愿意在常规门诊就诊时接受读写能力评估，并且进行此类评估不会降低患者满意度。
