Introduction
The current situation with medical websites and health literacy in diverse healthcare contexts requires nursing professionals to adopt new roles. Particularly, they are anticipated to apply education to teach the basics of quality appraisal to an average patient. This paper seeks to discuss the state of patient health literacy in the mental healthcare field and suggest strategies to improve it.
Consumer Health Literacy in Psychiatric Inpatient Settings
As a professional working at an inpatient psychiatric facility for both adult and geriatric patients, I would characterize the current level of health literacy as needing improvement. In more challenging cases of mental health conditions, such as treatment-resistant schizophrenia, severe depression with psychotic features, or type I bipolar disorder, misinterpreted information often comes from patients’ relatives and caregivers. Due to anxiety and the lack of psychiatric knowledge, the families have a propensity for reading any online materials regarding the diagnosis of interest, including Wikipedia and anonymous users’ impressions related to psychiatric treatment, without assessing authors’ professional credentials. Aside from that, even the use of trustworthy websites and definitions from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders might exacerbate these families’ despair by strengthening incorrect associations between psychotic disorders and incurable antisocial and violent behaviors (Katschnig, 2018). Similarly, in the instances of hospitalization for severe major depressive disorder, patients’ relatives may misinterpret disease prognosis, which finds reflection in their tendency to overestimate suicidal risks and request an inadequate amount of supervision. Therefore, the uneasiness of patients’ relatives plays a central role in health information misinterpretation.
The levels of consumer literacy in my workplace and the mental healthcare system may be critically low, which also deals with patients’ characteristics. As per the admission statistics from multi-unit inpatient facilities for psychiatric patients, around 75% of admissions are the minority, elderly, or uninsured patients, and all these categories increase the likelihood of insufficient skills for the interpretation of medical information (Bacon et al., 2017). In the facility where I work, the statistics would be somewhat similar, and aligning patient education strategies with each group’s unique determinants of literacy is essential.
Strategies to Assist Patients in Applying/Interpreting Health Information Found Online
Considering the specifics of the inpatient facility, online health information-seeking is more common in patients’ relatives that visit them and communicate with the staff. Patients’ families or caregivers represent the category that tends to overuse websites with varying medical review practices prior to publication. Possible strategies for this consumer population include creating an informational handout with a comprehensive list of trustworthy mental health information sources, including the National Institute of Mental Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Psychiatric Association, and so on (Chen et al., 2018). With this website selection guide as a reference point, the families would be encouraged to weigh the information that concerns them against the source’s scientific reputation. Another potentially viable approach for this subgroup would be to apply the principles of andragogy, such as orientation at practical relevance and self-direction, to introduce them to the levels of evidence (Sanchez & Cooknell, 2017). The explanation of the evidence hierarchy in simple terms will discourage the families from extrapolating the results of “revolutionary” single studies without randomization and substantial samples on the entire population with a certain diagnosis, including their relatives.
For patients, the issue of external influences and misinformation is not particularly strong during hospitalizations due to nurses’ presence and readiness to explain the purpose of medications and therapy sessions. Nevertheless, warning them against overusing medical websites in the post-discharge period is a significant task. This could be done by instructing them on the limited applicability of generic online information to their unique mental health case and offering continuing informational support.
Conclusion
Finally, consumers’ increasing access to web-based sources of medical information for non-professionals can have negative implications for patient decision-making. In inpatient psychiatric hospitals, the risks of misinformation are tremendously high for clients’ caregivers, and adult learning principles could be applied to create quality appraisal guides for this group. Pre-discharge consultations for hospitalized patients could also support optimal literacy.
References
Bacon, O., Vandenberg, A., & May, M. E. (2017). Provider and patient perception of psychiatry patient health literacy. Pharmacy Practice (Granada), 15(2), 1-5.
Chen, Y. Y., Li, C. M., Liang, J. C., & Tsai, C. C. (2018). Health information obtained from the internet and changes in medical decision making: Questionnaire development and cross-sectional survey. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 20(2), 1-10.
Katschnig, H. (2018). Psychiatry’s contribution to the public stereotype of schizophrenia: Historical considerations. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 24(5), 1093-1100.
Sanchez, L. M., & Cooknell, L. E. (2017). The power of 3: Using adult learning principles to facilitate patient education. Nursing, 47(2), 17-19.