ABSTRACT
Communication between healthcare professionals and patients is central to quality healthcare. However, patients commonly report having difficulty understanding and comprehending instructions from healthcare professionals (Howard, Gazmararian & Parker, 2005; Williams, Davis, Parker & Weiss, 2002). Health professionals often have a poor understanding of health literacy (Macabasco-O’Connell & Fry-Bowers, 2011), commonly over-estimate health-literacy levels (Bass, Wilson, Griffith & Barnett, 2002) and even when provided with information on a patient’s health-literacy level often fail to communicate effectively (Seligman et al., 2005). In addition, healthcare professionals often use terminology not familiar to the patient and deliver too much information without checking the level of understanding (Ong, De Haes, Hoos & Lammes, 1995). Moreover, communication techniques rarely integrate issues of culture, language, literacy and learning. Consequently, patients often report remembering less than half of the information conveyed during a consultation and are unclear how to manage their medical condition(s) (Makaryus & Friedman, 2005).
