Improving comprehension for cancer patients with low literacy skills: strategies for clinicians.

This paper provides strategies to improve communication between clinicians and patients, particularly patients who are among the 44 million adult Americans with low literacy skills. Included are insights into the nature of the literacy problem and how it affects patient comprehension of information across the continuum of cancer care. Practical strategies address how to help patients understand medical advice, reduce literacy levels of cancer information, and help patients remember the advice given. A summary of the strategies is included in the Appendix for convenient reference.

Strategies to improve cancer education materials.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES: To highlight the benefits of creating effective materials for cancer education; to describe strategies to enhance the suitability of materials for all readers, including those with limited literacy skills. DATA SOURCES: Published research and education articles, health education models and theories, the National Cancer Institute Office of Cancer Communications, and personal experiences. DATA SYNTHESIS: Written materials, including visuals, commonly are used to convey cancer life-style risks, detection methods, treatments and procedures, and informed consent information. Such materials are relevant and suitable only when they can be read and understood and are matched to patients' reading abilities. A systematic process to achieve effective written materials includes assessing the target audience, limiting the educational objectives, focusing the content on the desired behaviors, presenting the context of the message first, and planning for reader interaction. The final step is verification of comprehension and suitability with the target audience. CONCLUSIONS: The creation of effective cancer education materials can be achieved by employing strategies that aim to enhance patient understandability, usability, relevancy, and motivation. Learner verification is a quality control process and a technique that helps ensure that materials are suitable for the intended audience and better matched to patients' learning needs. NURSING IMPLICATIONS: Nurses can improve the understandability of cancer education by using a variety of learning enhancement techniques and a set of organized planning steps. Such strategies can serve to improve the communication of cancer information to target groups with diverse literacy skills.

Patient comprehension profiles: recent findings and strategies.

Poor comprehension of instructions is a major cause of failure to achieve desired results in patient education. Tests to measure comprehension levels of patients and formulas to predict readability levels of materials can effectively determine gaps between instruction and comprehension. Strategies, many of which require a minimum amount of additional effort, can be applied to eliminate gaps and thereby achieve a better quality of care through educational programs.