Patient health literacy refers to an individual’s knowledge and understanding of their health conditions, medical services, and decisions. Low patient health literacy causes multiple healthcare issues, including lack of access to quality care, uninformed decisions, and poor treatment adherence. High literacy, on the other hand, guarantees a more successful healthcare experience, benefitting your patients and your medical practice. Discover more reasons why improving patient health literacy is important and learn what your dental office can do to improve.
Enhanced Patient Loyalty
Patient health literacy expands an individual’s comprehension of medical treatments and results. Their greater understanding allows them to make more informed decisions, improving the care they receive and expanding their patient’s rights. Improving your patients’ health literacy gives them authority and autonomy. As you expand your patients’ rights, you build trust and strengthen your relationship with them—increasing their loyalty to your practice.
Safer Patient Handling
Greater knowledge expands your capabilities, leading to better actions, decisions, and understandings. OSHA’s main goal is to provide adequate knowledge of workplace health and safety as a means to enhance work conditions.
Your staff learns about workplace health and safety through training. OSHA manuals for dental offices give your dental staff all the necessary information to enhance the clinic’s health and safety. Patients gain that knowledge through your staff. With your staff and patients properly informed on best health and safety practices, your facility becomes an even safer space as everyone is playing their part to keep it that way.
Reinforced Employee Knowledge
You can improve patient health literacy in many ways, from providing detailed, informative sheets to encouraging patients to do research before making any decisions. The best resource for information is your staff.
Enforcing your employees to thoroughly educate their patients on medical treatments and carefully go over their results expands your patients’ and staff’s medical knowledge. As your employees educate their patients, they reinforce their understanding and comprehension of the topics.
Improving patient health literacy is important because it enhances many aspects of your dental clinic, from safety to ethical practices. Guarantee your patients’ quality of care by keeping them adequately informed and literate on all the medical information pertaining to them.