What does health literacy have to do with patient education? I’ve been asked this question many times over the years, directly and indirectly. The question itself makes sense. As providers, you want patients to have health information in a way that they can use. You want to share what you know, in a way that […]
Patient Education
My single best piece of advice for health professionals
Recently, we celebrated the first anniversary here at the Health Communication Partners website. If you’ve been following along, you know that at HCP we believe in taking a resource perspective rather than deficit perspective. On everyone—providers and patients. We understand that health communication is a subset of everyday communication. We know everyone can learn (and […]
5 quick wins for your patient communication
Sometimes you just need a quick win. A panel I attended last week spent about 90 minutes really getting into the weeds of some serious issues around patient communication. Toward the end, the moderator turned to the panel and said, “Well, everyone wants a quick win.” He then put the panel members on the spot: […]
How your organization’s digital health tools can leave patients behind (and what can be done about it)
A health care administrator was talking with me about digital health tools. They’re everywhere, he acknowledged, pointing to several apps on his own smart phone. But he knew sometimes they weren’t all they’d cracked up to be. And this often fell at the foot of the provider. Of course, providers usually aren’t the developers or […]
What does “healthy” mean to your patient?
As providers, you have information that will help your patients be healthier. You hope to communicate it in a convincing way, so it will enter into patients’ thoughts and actions long after the patient encounter. But what about when you have differences of opinion on what healthy means? When it becomes clear you don’t share […]
What you need to know about health literacy and health apps
When physicians talk with me about apps, those conversations tend to fall into two categories. (No, not ‘glee’ and ‘horror.’) Maybe these apply to you: your patients are coming to you, talking/asking questions about various apps, or your organization uses a specific app, and you are talking to patients about that app. So if you […]