Giving advice on clear communication

摘要

To address the issues of health literacy, St. Vincent Charity Medical Center in Cleveland, OH, made a radical move. It abolished its patient education committee and formed the Health Literacy Institute, which consists of an interdisciplinary team of caregivers who are dedicated to improving health literacy through better communication.Karen Komondor, RN, director of patient and staff education, heads up the team. All team members developed a passion for improving health literacy through education on that subject, which gave them a different perspective, Komondor says. "We saw that although many of us had been in healthcare a long time, we didn't realize that maybe our patients didn't understand what was being taught, and it wasn't about noncompliance," she explains.