Doctors take care of patients at Hà Giang
province’s General Hospital. According to a leading health researcher,
Vietnamese health literacy continues to lag behind world standards, and the
efficacy of healthcare suffers for it.VNA/VNS Photo Minh Tâm
In Việt
Nam’s crowded public hospitals, patients only get one or two minutes with a
doctor instead of 15-20, leading to inadequate health literacy and less
effective treatment, according to a leading health researcher.
Võ Văn Thắng,
head of the Institute of Community Health Research at the Huế University of
Medicine and Pharmacy, told Việt Nam News that doctors do not have time to
learn about patients’ medical history or communicate other things related to
patients’ health since they examine more than 100 patients ever day.
“This
thing could lead to imprecise diagnosis and treatment.”
This poor
clinician-patient communication also results in low health literacy among
patients, he said.
He
described health literacy as people’s capacity to obtain, process and
understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate
health decisions.
Many
patients leave hospitals with questions unasked because of the poor
clinician-patient communication, he said.
He cited
a study titled Health Literacy & the Prescription Drug Experience to point
out that 80 per cent of patients forget what their doctor tells them as soon as
they leave the hospital.
Senior
patients are especially prone to forget while ethnic minority groups are
disproportionately affected by low health literacy, he said.
He also
blamed illegible prescriptions written by doctors for the low health literacy.
Dương Văn
Tuyển, assistant secretary general of the Geneva, Switzerland-based Asian
Health Literacy Association, cited many studies that show low health literacy
is associated with a high hospitalisation rate.
He was
speaking at an international scientific workshop on enhancing health literacy
and social work to improve the quality of care and patient safety in hospitals
organised on Wednesday in HCM City by the Thủ Đức District Hospital, the
Institute for Community Health Research, and the Asian Health Literacy
Association.
A study
done by Dr Richard T.Griffey of Washington University, the US, and his
colleagues found that patients with inadequate health literacy made a higher
number of return visits within 14 days than those with adequate health
literacy, he said.
People
with limited health literacy pay higher healthcare costs, he added.
According
to US Census Bureau estimates, the savings that could be achieved by improving
health literacy - US$106-238 billion - translate into enough funds to insure
every one of the more than 47 million people who lacked coverage in 2006, he
said.
Integrating
health literacy into the healthcare agenda in Asian countries could be an
effective way to reduce the burden of chronic diseases, the pivotal cause of
mortality.
Solutions
Thắng
said using IT can help patients obtain information about health problems and
hospitals, know how to access medical services, and make right decisions in
seeking healthcare.
This
means patients would no longer insist on coming to city- or central-level
hospitals for treatment of less serious diseases, reducing overcrowding at
these health facilities, he added.
Hospitals
need to pay more attention to health literacy, especially focusing on improving
staff training in communication skills.
Nguyễn Tấn
Bỉnh, head of the city Department of Health, said health literacy is an
important daily activity which hospitals have to undertake to improve the
quality of healthcare and patient safety.
Social
work divisions at hospitals could help raise health literacy among patients, he
added.
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