Measuring Health Literacy

Personally, I don’t believe it is necessary to test a patient’s literacy level. If you individualize teaching to the learner, you are constantly evaluating understanding and modifying your teaching so it is understood.

However, I know there are still a lot of health care providers who don’t think their patient populations include patients with poor literacy skills. For them, I suggest they try this quick assessment test on their patients. This test takes 3 minutes to administer, and is available in both English and Spanish.

For this test, questions to ask, answer key, and information relating to its reliability and validity go to:

http://pfizerhealthliteracy.com/physicians-providers/newest-vital-sign.html

Patients are given a nutrition label from an ice cream container. They are then asked 6 questions about how they would interpret and act on the information contained on the label. Patients can and should retain the label so they can refer to it while answering questions. The questions are asked orally and the responses recorded by a health care provider on a special score sheet, which contains the correct answers. Based on the number of correct responses, the health care provider can assess the patient’s health literacy level.

The researchers found the skills needed to answer these questions correctly are the same skills needed for health literacy, such as understanding and taking prescriptions correctly, and following instructions for self-care skills.

3 Responses to “Measuring Health Literacy”

1. Sandy Cornett says:

   February 21, 2010 at 11:46 am

   Fran:
   I agree with you that we should not be “testing” an individual’s literacy level as part of the assessment when they come to our facilities. That is much too intimidating and sets the wrong tone for the patient-provider interaction. However, you may want to test a number of patients, using the NVS, to get an average of the literacy levels of a group of patients that we serve at a specific health center. In this instance, it is presented to the patient as a way for them to help us determine if we are meeting the needs of our patients by having the appropriate materials for them.
   Sandy
2. Helen Osborne says:

   February 22, 2010 at 6:06 am

   The Newest Vital Sign is best used to assess populations, not individuals. Here’s an article I wrote based on an interview with Barry Weiss, MD who worked with a team to develop the Newest Vital Sign. “In Other Words… Screening for Health Literacy Using the Newest Vital Sign,” http://www.healthliteracy.com/article.asp?PageID=6766
3. Kim Hume says:

   February 22, 2010 at 8:25 am

   Fran,
   I agree with what you are saying. If only we could get others in our institutions to understand this concept of individualized, personalized teaching at the patients level. I think the Pfizer test is a simple way to deomonstrate that a person’s appearance, educational level and profession will not predict their literacy level. Unfortunately, some staff use these criteria to determine what or how they will teach a patient.