The impact of health literacy on patient care in otolaryngology

Health literacy is the ability to obtain, understand, and use information and services needed to make appropriate healthcare decisions. Roughly a third of the US population has inadequate health literacy. Inadequate health literacy is associated with poor health outcomes. Patients with inadequate health literacy also face many hurdles when navigating the healthcare system. Strategies that may help ameliorate the health literacy burden of clinical encounters include routine health literacy assessment in clinical practice to identify patients that may need additional assistance in navigating the healthcare system, use of clear and concise language when communicating with patients, and ensuring that patient education materials and patient documents are written at an appropriate grade reading level.