Hospital discharge summaries are a health literacy issue

Patient
October 11, 2011

A couple of years ago, a frail 88 year old Filipino woman came into the emergency department of my hospital complaining of confusion and weakness of her left arm.  Her blood sugar level was extraordinarily low, so low that she would have died had she not received immediate treatment.

The emergency room doctors treated her by injecting her with sugar, and then called the team of internists on call to admit …

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Hospital discharge summaries are a health literacy issue

Start thinking about health literacy in a broader framework

Patient
January 4, 2011

I have a patient who I will call Antonia.

Antonia is in her early 70’s.  She came to the United States from Guatemala many years ago, but never learned to speak much English.  This doesn’t cause her much of a problem; her community is small and tightly-knit, so she doesn’t have much need to speak English in her home or her neighborhood.   And she has a large family—children and grandchildren and …

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Start thinking about health literacy in a broader framework