Abstract: Effective communication is a foundation of high-quality, patient-centered health care. Understanding health literacy is an essential attribute that health care professionals need to possess in order to promote effective partnerships with patients and their significant others. Nurses, especially, need to be involved in addressing the epidemic problem of low health literacy in the United States because they are responsible for the majority of patient, caregiver and community health education and communication. Nurses play a key role in providing health care information to individuals, families and groups in a variety of settings and therefore should be educated about the essentials of health literacy, its prevalence in society and its relationship to health outcomes. There are currently no standards for including health literacy training in the undergraduate nursing curriculum. A review of the current literature on health literacy shows no formal recommendations for how, where or how to include this topic in pre-licensure education. The research demonstrates that a gap in nursing education existts, but there has been relatively little research on health literacy and recommendation for nursing education. Results of the pilot study and actual study will be presented.
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a Health Literacy Module (HeLM) on health literacy knowledge, attitudes and skills of pre-licensure nursing students using a pretest and posttest approach in order to raise awareness, build the skills and improve knowledge of health literacy and the impact on patient outcomes.
Method: Pre-licensure baccalaureate nursing students (n=180) were invited to participate in this quasi-experimental study. Students completed the health literacy questionnaire: The Health Literacy Knowledge and Experience Survey (HL-KES) as both a pretest and a post test. The classroom sessions included the researcher designed components of the HeLM which included a power point presentation, videos, active learning strategies and what to include in a patient education health literacy "toolkit".
Findings: It is the hope of the researcher that the findings will support the inclusion of a practical approach to incorporating health literacy education into the nursing curriculum.