Dr. Mark V. Williams serves as Professor & Chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine and BJC HealthCare in Saint Louis, Missouri. Dr. Williams established the first hospitalist program in a U.S. public hospital and continues to promote the role of hospitalists as leaders in the delivery of health care. In addition, he is an active researcher whose work focuses on quality improvement, care transitions, teamwork, and the role of health literacy in the delivery of health care.

In this podcast. Mark Williams talks with Helen Osborne about:

• “Inadequate Functional Health Literacy Among Patients at Two Public Hospitals,” published in JAMA 1995, by Williams MV, Parker RM, Baker DW, Pankh NS, Pitkin K, Coates WC, Nurss JR. As the authors noted, this likely “is the first published study to assess the ability of patients to perform the wide range of literacy tasks required to function in the health care environment.”
• Why health literacy mattered so much then, and still does now.
• Examples of ways that clinicians can use health literacy strategies to earn patients’ trust and help people feel cared for, and cared about.

More ways to learn:

• “Inadequate Functional Health Literacy Among Patients at Two Public Hospitals,”published in JAMA 1995, by Williams MV, Parker RM, Baker DW, Pankh NS, Pitkin K, Coates WC, Nurss JR.
• “Inadequate Literacy is a Barrier to Asthma Knowledge and Self-Care,” published in Chest1998, by Williams MV, Baker DW, Honig EG, Lee TM, Nowlan.
• “Relationship of Functional Health Literacy to Patients’ Knowledge of Their Chronic Disease,” published in JAMA 1998, by Williams MV, Baker DW, Parker RM, Nurss JR.
• “The Role of Health Literacy in Patient-Physician Communication,” published in Family Medicine 2002, by Williams MV, Davis, TD, Parker RM, Weiss BD.
• “Embracing carers: when will adult hospitals fully adopt the same practices as children’s hospitals?” published in BMJ 2023, by Williams MV, Li J.

Health Literacy from A to Z: Practical Ways to Communicate Your Health Message, Third Edition, by Helen Osborne. The first chapter, “About Health Literacy” is especially relevant to this podcast.

Read a transcript of this podcast.

The post Health Literacy: Helping Patients Feel Cared For, and Cared About (HLOL #239) appeared first on Health Literacy Out Loud Podcast.