Abstract
BackgroundLow health literacy has been associated with poor health outcome and impaired use of healthcare services. The hospital discharge letter represents a key source of medical information for patients and can be used to address the problem of low health literacy. The aim of this project was to develop and evaluate a new, patient-directed, version of the discharge letter.MethodsBased upon two conventional discharge letters (CDL; one surgical and one medical letter), two new, patient-friendly discharge letters (PFDL) were designed following 5 key principles: short sentences, few abbreviations, large font size, avoidance of technical terms and no more than 4 pages length. Medical undergraduates were randomized into two blinded groups (CDL, PFDL) and asked to assess the assigned letter for the 3 domains structure, content and patient-friendliness. Subsections were rated on a 6-point Likert scale (1 = completely agree, 6 = completely disagree), the results of the survey were compared using the Mann-Whitney-U-Test with a p < 0.05 being the level of significance.ResultsIn total, 74 undergraduates participated in this study. PFDL (35 participants) were rated significantly better than CDL (39 participants) regarding structure (median 1 vs. 2, p = 0.005), content (1 vs. 3, p < 0.001) and patient-friendliness (2 vs. 6, p < 0.001). Of all 17 subsections, PFDL were rated significantly better in 12 cases, and never worse than CDL.ConclusionsPFDL were rated significantly better than their CDL counterparts. Medical undergraduates were considered the ideal cohort, not being medical lays and yet unbiased regarding everyday clinical practice procedures. Further tests evaluating the impact of the PFDL on patient comprehension and health literacy are necessary.
Highlights
High health literacy can be seen as one of the biggest assets in patients receiving healthcare, whereas low health literacy can be pictured as a clinical risk [1]
Further tests evaluating the impact of the patient-friendly discharge letters (PFDL) on patient comprehension and health literacy are necessary
Two conventional discharge letters (CDL), one surgical, one medical, that were randomly selected from the sample of 100 discharge letters from surgical and medical specialties, two new, patient-friendly discharge letters (PFDL) were created according to the guidelines of the final version of the HL7 Implementation Guide for discharge letters for “Elektronische Gesundheitsakete” – Austrian Electronic Health Records (ELGA) [18]
Summary
High health literacy can be seen as one of the biggest assets in patients receiving healthcare, whereas low health literacy can be pictured as a clinical risk [1]. Health care providers have to pursue a bilateral approach: on the one hand improving patients’ health literacy through patient education and on the other hand providing information suitable to the patients’ health literacy level. The former task needs a community-based approach [5], while the latter can be accomplished by individual healthcare providers through face-to-face conversation or adequate presentation of medical information [6]. The hospital discharge letter represents a key source of medical information for patients and can be used to address the problem of low health literacy The aim of this project was to develop and evaluate a new, patientdirected, version of the discharge letter
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
