Health Literacy Paper

669 Words2 Pages

The problem of health literacy is universal, and it goes past those who cannot read, write, or speak English. The fundamental goal of nursing research is to improve nursing practice. In a manner conforming to Weiss and Tappen (2015), Individuals without necessary health literacy skills are less likely to meet their health-care conditions (p. 89). This paper explores three article that describe the role and application of health literacy in nursing. However, the studies share similarities in how they link health literacy to patient education and more so patient self-care management. While the purpose of the articles is to determine knowledge improvement in clinical nurses, Sherman (2016) empowers and educate nurses to ensure that they are well …show more content…

The author’s study design is guided by a clinical question – “Will clinical nurses demonstrate improvement in knowledge as well as performance during simulated patient scenario after completing a curriculum designed to promote effective and efficient patient education through the use of key steps to education” (p. 298). To begin with, the author devised a standardized approach to help answer her clinical question. Specifically, the project utilized 85 nurses including a standardized patient education curriculum in which learners goals and objectives were identified, appropriate delivery method and evaluation with teach-back method were used. During a 15-minute simulation scenario session that addressed a patient in need of discharge education and ready for discharge, nurse managers presented involved nurses with instructions on pre-test completion. As soon as the sessions were over, participants completed a post-test – just like the pre-test, the post-test did not include identifying information to maintain anonymity. For further analysis, simulation sessions were recorded and reviewed alongside a checklist by two more nurse educators. Thereafter, three statistics collection software (Excel, IBM Corp. and Kappa statistics) were used to …show more content…

Overall, each simulation performance checklist objectives showed improvement. Some of the limitations the study encountered were a small sample group, reliability of tools used was not statistically determined, a group of nurses was unable to complete simulation due to scheduling conflict, and inter-rater reliability between two nurse educator observers was not up to standard. In terms of nursing implications, the standardized patient education curriculum generated will continue to serve as an effective education tool. Furthermore, better patient education practices help foster patients’ ability in self-care hence improved patient outcomes. As stated by the author in her conclusion, “To promote better patient health outcomes, clinical nurses need to be involved increasingly with patient education. However, they require support and resources in their role as patient educators to be successful” (p.

Open Document