Group items tagged

Squellati, Robin. "Health Literacy: Understanding Basic Information." Creative Nursing 16.3 (2010): 110-114. Web. 24 Nov 2010. This article is about the concern of health literacy in Americans today. It tells of the importance of being able to obtain, processm and understand basic health information. Many of the healthcare providers out there are nurses, and, according to this article, they can help decrease the amount of patients with low health literacy. This article also states that health literacy can have an impact on an idividuals health status and the cost of health care in general. There is a big need for nurses to educate their patients about their health and health literacy in general.

Reyes, Darcel. "My First Patient as a Nurse Practitioner: A Man With Low Literacy." International Journal of Nursing Terminologies and Classifications 21.4 (Oct 2010): 177-181. Web. 24 Nov 2010. This article is a sotry about a Nurse Practitioner and he experience with a man who had very low health literacy. She talks about the importance of knowing the level of literacy in patients before diagnosing them. She thinks that special tools should be used to evaluate the level of health literacy a patient has. She says that not knowing the level or literacy could result in an improper diagnosis/ treatment which could be more harmful to the patient.

Ward-Smith, Peggy. "Obesity -- America's Health Crisis." Urologic Nursing 30.4 (2010): 242-245. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 17 Nov. 2010. The article reports on obesity as an ongoing health crisis in the U.S. Defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that annual medical costs associated with the disease have increased. It is noted that obese people are subjected to bias, prejudice and discrimination. Treatment options for obesity are discussed, which include pharmacological intervention and bariatric surgery.

Cornett, Sandy. "Assessing and Addressing Health Literacy." Online Journal of Issues in Nursing 14.3 (2009). EBSCOhost. Web. 24 Nov 2010. This article states that we must first be able to identify a patient with low health literacy to be able to communicate with them effectivly. This article gives guidance on how to identify a patients literacy level. It also states how to do things that can increase the overall levels of health literacy. It states that even if someone has high literacy levels that doesnt mean that they will always understand all of their health and health care information. Another idea that was brought up in this article is that one must also form a comfortable environment for patients to become more health literate.

Mancuso, Josephine M. "Assessment and measurement of health literacy: An integrative review if the literature." Nursing and Health Sciences 11.1 (Mar 2009): 77-89. Web. 24 Nov 2010. The main purpose of this article is to relate health literacy to many other aspects of healthcare, including health knowledge, health behaviors, health outcomes, and the costs of healthcare. This article is trying to find out what is already being done to make people more health literate and what can be done to improve this in the future. Graphs are also shown in this article of two instruments used to measure health literacy: Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM) and the Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults(TOFHLA). It shows the studies on these graphs and the conclusions that they came up with about the health literacy in Americans. The main goal in all of this research is too improve health care in all of its aspects.

Coombes, Rebecca."Developed world is robbing African countries of health staff". bmj.com. BMJ, Volume 230, p.923, April 23, 2005. This article talks about how developed nations are draining all the healthcare professionals out of the developing countries, and that this sort of drain is causing very strained health services in these regions, since most of them have very few to no doctors or nurses in most of the areas. This helps in quickening the depletion of health services and thus health in general, in these developing nations.