University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, III. Department of Internal Medicine, Hamburg, Germany.
University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Center for Experimental Medicine, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Cell Biology, Hamburg, Germany.
GMS J Med Educ. 2021 Jun 15;38(5):Doc94. doi: 10.3205/zma001490. eCollection 2021.
Physicians are frequently not aware that patients may not be familiar with the meaning of medical terms or have limited knowledge about the location of organs. These aspects of functional health competence require particular attention when designing communication curricula for undergraduate medical students. The aim of our study was to evaluate the knowledge of laypersons about the anatomical locations of organs and the definitions of commonly used medical terms as relevant aspects of health literacy. Furthermore, we wished to compare it with the knowledge of a historical patient cohort who performed this study 50 years ago. In this replication study, multiple-choice questionnaires with simple anatomy and common medical terms which were published in 1970 were distributed among a convenience sample of lay volunteers (n=537) from the streets of Hamburg, Germany. Sociodemographic data including sex, age, highest educational school achievement, occupation in a field associated with medicine, and German as first language were also collected. The percentage of laypersons' correct answers was compared to the percentage of correct answers of a historical patient cohort (n=234) published in 1970 to identify the development of health literacy as basis for curricular planning. Laypersons showed significantly more correct answers in four of eight simple anatomical locations of organs (p<0.001). For seven commonly used medical terms laypersons only gave significantly more correct answers for the definitions of "jaundice" (p<0.001) and "diarrhoea" (p=0.001) compared to the historical cohort from 1970. Participants with a senior high school degree performed significantly better with respect to total scores of correct organ locations (<0.001, =0.35) and correct definitions of medical terms (=0.001, =0.30) than participants who completed junior high school. The definitions of common medical terms and the correct anatomical locations of organs by laypersons have increased during the past 50 years but could still need improvement by school education and media information of better quality. Medical educators should know about the low health literacy of laypersons with respect to these aspects to raise medical students' awareness for this problem and to provide communication training for medical students to use comprehensible language during history taking and shared decision making.
医生经常没有意识到患者可能不熟悉医学术语的含义，或者对器官位置的了解有限。在为医学生设计沟通课程时，这些功能健康能力的方面需要特别注意。我们的研究目的是评估非专业人士对器官解剖位置和常用医学术语定义的了解，作为健康素养的相关方面。此外，我们希望将其与 50 年前进行这项研究的历史患者队列的知识进行比较。在这项复制研究中，向德国汉堡街头的便利样本非专业志愿者（n=537）分发了带有简单解剖学和常用医学术语的多项选择题问卷。还收集了社会人口统计学数据，包括性别、年龄、最高教育学校成就、与医学相关的职业以及第一语言为德语。将非专业人士的正确答案百分比与 1970 年发表的历史患者队列（n=234）的正确答案百分比进行比较，以确定健康素养的发展作为课程规划的基础。非专业人士在八个器官简单解剖位置中的四个位置上的正确答案比例明显更高（p<0.001）。对于七个常用医学术语，与 1970 年的历史队列相比，非专业人士仅对“黄疸”（p<0.001）和“腹泻”（p=0.001）的定义给出了明显更高的正确答案。具有高中文凭的参与者在正确回答器官位置的总分数（<0.001，=0.35）和正确回答医学术语的定义（=0.001，=0.30）方面的表现明显优于完成初中的参与者。在过去的 50 年中，非专业人士对常见医学术语的定义和器官的正确解剖位置有所提高，但通过学校教育和更好质量的媒体信息仍需要改进。医学教育者应该了解非专业人士在这些方面的健康素养较低，以提高医学生对这一问题的认识，并为医学生提供沟通培训，以便在问诊和共同决策时使用可理解的语言。
