Health Literacy in Medical Education: Promoting Empowerment as a Patient-Centred Care Approach

Philip Girvan

Background/Purpose: A patient-centered approach positions the patient at the centre of health practices, policies, curricula, and pedagogies. In order to practice in a patient-centred manner, health professionals must take into account the multiple social complexities of the patient, not the least of which is health literacy. It is therefore important to consider how and where issues of health literacy are being addressed in undergraduate medical education.

Methodology: This proposed presentation will report on a systematic literature review, critical analysis and synthesis of the following bodies of literature: patient-centered care; health literacy; medical education. The review focused on articles published in English in peer-reviewed health professional education journals between 01 January 2000 and 31 December 2010.

Results:Health literacy encompasses knowledge, understanding, and access to and control of resources that promote and maintain satisfactory health and wellbeing. It is the outcome of such diverse abilities as reading, writing, numeracy, the ability to access information, and critical thinking. A surprisingly small proportion of the literature in the area of patient-centred care focuses on health literacy as a determinant of health and well being. An even smaller proportion of the literature considered health literacy as an issue of concern to be addressed in the education of future physicians.

Conclusions/Discussion:The dearth of related literature indicates that there is much work to be done in considering how issues of health literacy might be addressed in patient-centred medical education. An emphasis on health literacy in medical education will have implications on power relations in educational settings as well as in, and beyond, the clinical encounter.