Explaining Illness to Patients With Limited Literacy Mark V.Williams, Emory University School of Medicine William T.Branch, Emory University School of Medicine Center, Shreveport

Physicians’ core clinical skill is communication; however, many patients have difficulty understanding their doctors’ instructions (Cohen-Cole, 1991; Mayeaux et al., 1996). Even immediately after leaving their physi-cians’ offices, patients are able to correctly identify only about 50% of the critical information just given to them (Cohen-Cole, 1991; Kitagawa & Hauser, 1973; Stamler, Hardy, & Payne, 1987). Patients with poor literacy skills probably account for a substantial portion of these patients, and they certainly have a poorer understanding of common medical terms (Gibbs, Gibbs, & Henrich, 1987; Mayeaux et al., 1996) and written health materials than literate patients (Davis, Bocchini et al., 1996; Davis, Fredrickson et al., 1998; Davis, Holcombe, Berkel, Pramanik, & Divers, 1998; Williams et al., 1995).