“We’ll see you and Katie on Monday. Take it easy this weekend,” the vet tech says on the other end of the phone. “Thanks,” I say, and my voice can’t escape cracking, and I hang up the phone and cry. It’s Saturday. The Monday appointment will likely have only one outcome. I am standing at […]
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Upgrade your patient education. Fast. Here. Now.
Partners, I’m proud to announce – the Effective Patient Education Audiobook Bundle This bundle will make your life easier. And it might change the way you think about patient education. You see many patients in a day and have a high level of complexity to deal with. You want patients to trust you, hear […]
Why addressing unconscious bias can make people nervous
Last week I was in Baltimore, at the International Conference on Communication in Healthcare/Health Literacy Annual Research Conference. Every one of the keynote addresses discussed biases and stereotypes. Every one. (Biases and stereotypes was not the conference theme.) The importance of examining and addressing unconscious biases seems to be well understood in the research community. […]
“How can we be effective in the short amount of time we have?”
Patient education is a cornerstone of care. You see many patients in a day and have a high level of complexity to deal with. Your patient education is also expected to achieve multiple simultaneous goals, under increasingly restricted circumstances. A nurse administrator asked me the question that’s the title of this article. It’s no secret […]
Health literacy as an interaction, Part 1
On this date, 14 years ago, Louise Rosenblatt died. She was 100 years old. Louise Rosenblatt was a researcher in reading and writing for nearly the entire 20th century (!!) and into the 21st. Maybe you’ve heard of her. If you haven’t, a Google search for her will yield about 3 billion results. So I’ll […]
5 Tips to help your interprofessional communication
Over the last six weeks, four different health care professionals have asked me about interprofessional communication. Two were public health administrators, one was a medical educator, and one was a physician-administrator. All four were in different organizations. I don’t know why the sudden uptick. But I am taking notice, and taking this chance to share […]
3 Quick ways to improve your day-to-day patient communication
The providers I speak with know that communication is central to their ability to do their jobs well. They know how much patient education matters to outcomes, short-term and long term. They want to get through to every patient, not just some of them. I join my voice with those who make issues of patient communication and education central […]
One thought on health communication and chronic disease
“Well, like the food for instance, it wasn’t a very extensive list of what you could eat, it was very limited and most of the food I eat wasn’t on it…” (participant, Carolan Gill & Steele 2012) You can’t be in health communication and health literacy without hearing about chronic disease, non-communicable diseases, and disease […]
A communication problem that can derail your digital health tools
You know that clear communication between patient and providers is essential. It’s no different for digital health tools, such as apps, patient portals, devices, telehealth, and the most popular digital health tool, websites. Clear communication in and through digital health tools is complex in its own right. Based on a recent podcast with me and […]
