The American Medical Association recommends that the readability of written health information should target a sixth-grade level. This is due to the lack of health literacy among adults.
Yet only a quarter of patients had adequate skills to understand discharge instruction notes.
It’s unproductive when patients don’t understand their health condition, options, or treatment plan. They won’t be able to make informed decisions about their care or accurately follow their treatment. This would only result in more health consequences.
To prevent this, hospital staff need to educate clients to their comprehension level. This gives them more control over their health in each part of their hospital experience. It helps them make the best decisions for themselves.
Here are three of the most important reasons for patient education in the hospital setting.
Table of Contents
Helps Patients Make Infomed Decisions
One main reason for patient education in the hospital setting is so people can make informed decisions about their health. With a lack of health literacy of almost half the US adult population, it’s difficult for many people to know what choices to make about their care.
Informed consent is when communication between doctors and patients leads to authorization for a procedure. This education process includes all the…
Risks
Benefits
Alternatives of a health decision
When patients have different options for their health, education is necessary for guiding them to an informed choice.
For example, risky treatments like heart bypass surgery require a patient to weigh their pros and cons. On the one hand, the procedure can help their condition or ease ailments. On the other, major surgeries could potentially cause other complications.
When making a major decision like this, patients need to understand how each option would impact them. As a medical worker, you should outline all the short-term and long-term benefits and risks with each choice.
Think about when you receive a new prescription and you look at the list of all potential side effects. This can make you hesitant to take the medicine. You start to wonder if the benefits do outweigh the potential risks. But when doctors explain the details to their patients, they can better decide if they should or shouldn’t use it.
It’s helpful to give your recommendation and patients may appreciate this. But it’s also important not to influence people by withholding useful knowledge that could help them decide. Doing so without the patient’s knowledge or consent is unethical.
Of course, there is a fine line of when it becomes an overload of information. You don’t want to overwhelm the patient with so many complex terms. That’s why the American Medical Association recommends a sixth-grade reading level.
Overloading them can decrease their health literacy if it’s too complicated and it makes it more difficult to give informed consent.
Because of this, a balance is important. When you educate patients appropriately, they have all of the knowledge they need to make their choice. This makes them feel more in control and confident in how they proceed with their treatment. And it doesn’t overwhelm them to the point that it causes more stress or that they don’t know which option is best for them.
It’s also helpful for families when making decisions since not all patients can give their medical consent. It’s already difficult for families to have to deal with a loved one’s medical care. Not having a proper understanding of their options can add to their stress.
But the more someone stresses, the harder it is to give informed consent. Anxiety affects the brain in a way that skews decision-making. It’s important then for medical professionals to minimize this by educating families on their options. This way, they feel confident with the best choice for their loved one.
Reduces Leaving Against Medical Advice
One choice that someone makes if they don’t have the necessary education in the hospital setting is to leave against a doctor’s recommendation.
Discharge against medical advice (AMA) is when a patient leaves the hospital before their physician recommends it. This causes negative health consequences. The person is at risk of an inadequately treated condition and they have a higher chance for hospital readmission.
One study found that discharge AMA led to a 2.01 increased adjusted odds of 30-day readmissions. These accounted for over 400,000 inpatient hospitalization days. They can also cost 15 to 20 billion dollars annually.
There are many reasons why people choose to leave AMA, including:
Care doesn’t meet expectations
Family concerns or obligations
The patient feels better
Personal reasons
Work/financial reasons
via Research Gate
They need to understand that this is a major cause of other health concerns. At the time, they may think it’s in their best interest especially if they think their condition isn’t severe enough or they feel better. But they could end up regretting it later when they’re dealing with increased problems and have to return to the hospital.
By educating them on the extent of their situation and what it would mean if they didn’t receive complete treatment, you encourage them to stay. Explain to them how the benefits outweigh the risks if they were to wait until a recommendation from the doctor for discharge.
Medical staff must address the issue immediately when a patient wants to leave AMA. Then, determine the patient’s capacity to make the decision. Lacking informed consent suggests the need for more knowledge about the condition and how the decision could impact them.
Physicians have an obligation to assess the mental capacity of those who request discharge AMA. This helps determine if they can make that informed refusal to care.
Improves Adherence to Treatment Plan
The education in the hospital setting will extend after leaving, too. Like I mentioned earlier, many people don’t understand their discharge instruction notes. This makes it difficult to follow their treatment.
Adherence to long-term therapy for chronic illness is only 50% in developed countries. The international impact of poor medical compliance is growing. It causes worse outcomes from disease complications, hospital readmissions, and increasing healthcare costs.
Medication noncompliance is one of the greatest challenges when it comes to people adhering to treatment. This has some of the most serious impacts on health since taking medicine other than as directed can be deadly.
Taking prescriptions incorrectly leads to 10% to 25% of hospital and nursing home admissions and causes up to 125,000 deaths yearly. A reason for this is because people don’t understand how to take their medication.
Others think they can stop taking their prescription when they start feeling better, instead of completing all doses. And people may get frustrated if they think it isn’t working so they stop taking it altogether.
But when patients get comprehensive and effective education in the hospital setting, it makes it easier to follow the plan once they’re home.
It’s helpful for the doctor to think of ways that people may stray from their recovery plan. For example, a doctor should explain the importance of completing the full prescription. Otherwise, the patient may stop taking it when symptoms subside. This could negatively affect the condition or cause the medicine to be ineffective.
When doctors consider these scenarios, they can use them as a chance to inform people why each step of treatment is essential to recovery.
Using the teach-back method is a great way to ensure that patients understand their discharge notes. This method has the patient or their family re-explain to the health professional what they understand. That way, the doctor can fill in any gaps that the person is lacking.
It boosts adherence since the doctor can confirm the person understands treatment before leaving. The patient will feel more confident that they know how to follow their medication or recovery instructions.
Conclusion
There are recommendations for readability to improve the health literacy of patients. But still, many don’t understand their care instructions after they leave the hospital.
Unsurprisingly, this leads to negative health consequences. People won’t recover if they don’t understand their treatment plan or don’t follow proper medical guidance. Instead, they can experience disease and medical complications that land them right back into the hospital.
Readmissions are frustrating to patients and have high costs for the health industry. But thankfully, they’re avoidable when doctors teach their clients well.
Giving patients the necessary information of how a choice will impact them boosts their confidence in a health decision. With the right amount of knowledge, they won’t feel overwhelmed but still have informed consent about their decision.
This can help when a patient wants to leave against medical advice. When they don’t understand the consequences, they could make a choice that costs them their health once they leave. But with enough education on how this could negatively affect their health, they feel encouraged to stay.
And when they do leave at the right time, detailed instructions are just as necessary to take home. This ensures that patients understand what to do once they leave so they complete the full recovery process. That way they won’t end up back in the hospital because they didn’t know what their treatment instructions meant.
