For this Assignment: Health Literacy—Evaluation of Patient Forms / Educational Materials Essay
• Review the Resources for this week.
• Locate a patient-related document that is given to patients in your practice area or an area with which you are familiar. This document could be admission paperwork, health education materials, or other materials that are provided to a patient to inform them about health care decisions.
• Save this original document either as a file or in a portable document format (PDF) file to be submitted with this Assignment..
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• Evaluate the document in each of the six areas: message content, text appearance, visuals, layout and design, translation, and understandability. For each area, provide a summary of your assessment according to the criteria given. Health Literacy—Evaluation of Patient Forms / Educational Materials Essay.
• Include a brief summary (250 to 350 words) of the selected patient materials, how they are used in the facility, why they have been selected, and what improvements were made.
• Include a minimum of three resources from the professional nursing literature in the assigned course readings and other references in the Walden Library (Include the “Checklist for Easy to Understand Print Materials “as a reference). If relevant, you may use one or two professional web sites in addition to the literature references. Health Literacy—Evaluation of Patient Forms / Educational Materials Essay.
Resources: http://www.cdc.gov/healthliteracy/pdf/simply_put.pdf
Eadie, C. (2014). Health literacy: A conceptual review. MEDSURG Nursing, 23(1), 1–13.
Harris, L., Thomas, V., & Fox, M. (2015). The influence of health care literacy on the use of PHRs among older adults. MEDSURG Nursing, 24(4), 283–285.
Liebner, L. T. (2015). I can’t read that! Improving perioperative literacy for ambulatory surgical patients. AORN Journal, 101(4), 416–427.
http://www.nap.edu/read/10883/chapter/1 Health Literacy—Evaluation of Patient Forms / Educational Materials Essay
Health Literacy-Evaluation of Patient Forms
Introduction
America has recently faced a great opioid epidemic which was noted by the National Institute of Health as a significant public health issue. Many states have been prompted to take necessary action such as declaring a state of emergency due to the effects related to the opioid crisis (Velis, Borras & Khaja, 2018). Such decisions came after a historic landmark was released that declared the use of alcohol and drugs as one of the most pressing crisis in the health sector similar to type 2 diabetes mellitus, obesity, hypertension and cancers (Koenig, 2018). Health Literacy—Evaluation of Patient Forms / Educational Materials Essay.
Document Review
Early in 2017, regional and local hospitals within New Hampshire started a program whose aim was to reduce the use, abuse, and overdose of opioids especially from prescriptions that were being written in emergency rooms. One of the most effective programs which were implemented were basic guidelines which determined the prescribing of opioid named New Hampshire Safe Opioid Prescribing (Abuse, 2017). These guidelines were well written in a pamphlet and served as a resource for information and continuous education for nurses, healthcare providers, patients and families across New Hampshire as well as every Emergency Department. A policy for nurses to hand over the pamphlet to every patient who had either requested for an opioid, been prescribed or initially identified by the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program as an abuser or misuser of opioids.
The guidelines contained in the pamphlet clearly explained circumstances under which healthcare providers could and could not administer opioids for pain relief either as a form of a written prescription or for pain relief (Abuse, 2017). The pamphlet was for both males and females aged 18 and older. The details in the pamphlet were in simple English Language, was easy to read and understand. Health Literacy—Evaluation of Patient Forms / Educational Materials Essay.
Document Summary and Important Improvements
Nurses have a primary role of educating patients and in this case, are expected to provide patients with the pamphlet titled New Hampshire Safe Opioid Prescribing Guidelines to ensure that they understood basic information such as when and when not opioids could be prescribed. Based on the information conveyed, the “Nice to Know” section had information which was not important; the “Did You Know” section had unnecessary details such as statistics on the incidence, prevalence, and mortalities as a result of overdosages from prescribed opioids (Abuse, 2017). Health Literacy—Evaluation of Patient Forms / Educational Materials Essay. The section “Text appearance” was well in the entire pamphlet apart from the variation of font sizes in the entire document. In other instances, it was too small and those who had issues with vision had a lot of difficulties reading.
The “Visuals” used were clearer and the graphics were very much appropriate on opioid’s prescription guidelines. The pamphlet was provided in two languages: Spanish and English since the document was primarily designed for the Spanish demography. Thus, the “Translation” aspect was well addressed as the document was not only reliable but also accurate. In the “Understandability” area, the material was simple, understandable and easy to read. The best way to improve the material is to reduce the volume of the information provided and leave only what is essential. There is also some jargon used which hinders the ability to easily understand for some users. This jargon should be done away with. Health Literacy—Evaluation of Patient Forms / Educational Materials Essay.
Conclusion
The opioid epidemic required a lot of vigilance and collaboration to address. The invention of the pamphlet on the Greater Richmond Safe Opioid Prescribing Guidelines served as a major educational resource for nurses working in outpatient settings and emergency departments. Despite small issues, the pamphlet uses simple and understandable English language, good visuals and delivers the right message to its audience. Health Literacy—Evaluation of Patient Forms / Educational Materials Essay.
References
Abuse, N. I. (2017). Opioid Crisis. Retrieved August 10, 2017, from https://www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/opioids/opioid-crisis
Bao, Y., Pan, Y., Taylor, A., Radakrishnan, S., Luo, F., Pincus, H. A., & Schackman, B. R. (2016). Prescription drug monitoring programs are associated with sustained reductions in opioid prescribing by physicians. Health Affairs, 35(6), 1045-1051.
Haffajee, R. L., Jena, A. B., & Weiner, S. G. (2015). Mandatory use of prescription drug monitoring programs. Jama, 313(9), 891-892.
Koenig K. L. (2018). The Opioid Crisis in America: Too much, too little, too late. The western journal of emergency medicine, 19(3), 557–558. doi:10.5811/westjem.2018.2.38087
Velis, E., Borras, S., & Khaja, S. (2018). Mental Illness and Opioid Epidemic in the United States. European Scientific Journal, ESJ, 14(10). Health Literacy—Evaluation of Patient Forms / Educational Materials Essay.