Abstract
Many professionals have limited knowledge of how to address health literacy; they need a wider range of health literacy competencies to enhance empowerment and person-centred prevention. We evaluated whether: (1) a comprehensive health literacy training increased self-rated competencies of health professionals to address health literacy related problems and support the development of people’s autonomy and self-management abilities after training and 6–12 weeks later, (2) professionals were satisfied with the training, (3) outcomes differed for the three participating European countries. Health professionals (N = 106) participated in a multicentre pre-post intervention study in Italy, the Netherlands and Northern Ireland. The 8-hour training-intervention involved health literacy knowledge, the practice of comprehensible communication skills, shared decision-making, and enhancing self-management. Self-rated health literacy competencies and training satisfaction were assessed at baseline, immediately after training and 6-12 weeks later, and analysed by multi-level analysis. Professionals’ self-rated health literacy competencies significantly improved following training in all three countries; this increase persisted at 6-12 weeks follow-up. The strongest increase regarded professional’s skills to enhance shared-decision making and enabling self-management after training and follow-up respectively. Professionals perceived the training as relevant for practice. Competency increases seemed to be consistent across countries. In three countries, professionals’ self-rated health literacy competencies increased following this comprehensive training. These promising findings should be confirmed in a further full effect study. Implementation of this training in European education and health care may improve person-centred communication by professionals and might help to tackle health literacy related problems and to strengthen people’s abilities in achieving better health outcomes.
Highlights
By communicating more effectively, health care professionals have the possibility to improve the quality of person-centred prevention and health care for people with limited health literacy
Background characteristics did not modify the change in health literacy competencies over time. After attending this comprehensive health literacy training, we found a significant increase in self-rated competencies of health professionals to address health literacy related problems and skills to promote understanding of information, and support the development of autonomy and self-management abilities in conversations with patients
Its comprehensive training components augment these positive outcomes among professionals by addressing the complete range of functional, interactive and critical health literacy [3,25], supporting a wider range of professional competencies to support the development of the autonomy and self-management abilities of patients [40,41]
Summary
Health care professionals have the possibility to improve the quality of person-centred prevention and health care for people with limited health literacy. People with limited health literacy, especially those who are older and have a lower social economic status [4,5,6], encounter problems with understanding information, communicating with health professionals, and engaging in self-management activities [6,7,8]. Health professionals can enhance people’s health literacy skills, thereby contributing to increased adherence, patient safety, and improved quality of life and health outcomes [12,13,14]. We measured health literacy competencies with a self-rated questionnaire (See Supplementary Materials for the three questionnaires). We selected the relevant subscales from questionnaires which were used in previous studies on health literacy training interventions for (future) professionals, or derived from frameworks of communication strategies, as far as no suitable questionnaires were available which matched with the contents of our training [29,30,31,32,33,34]
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