Page 19 - THE DUTCH TALKING TOUCH SCREEN QUESTIONNAIRE

are influenced negatively. Health literacy itself is, amongst other factors, influenced by ethnic background, socio-economic factors, language proficiency and age (see Fig. 1.1) [13]. While individuals with different social and ethnic backgrounds and levels of education do usually not differ in their desire for information, their approaches in seeking and offering information in interaction with their health care providers differ [14]. Ethnic minority patients and patients with less than high school education rate health care visits as less participatory [15,16]. Patients with low literacy tend to ask fewer questions during clinical encounters with their health care providers [17-19], though they do have concerns about being inadequately informed about their conditions and treatments [19]. Patients with low HL have trouble determining which information their health care providers need and which information might be irrelevant. They often lack the health care vocabulary to report symptoms accurately and may convey information illogically or in a jumbled order [20,21]. In addition, they often feel overwhelmed by information about their illness [18,21] and are more likely to be confused or underinformed about their own health conditions and the processes of care required to successfully manage these [20,22]. Having less knowledge about a disease influences the way patients interact with their providers. Patients with low HL are more likely to employ a passive communication style [17,18]. The tendency to be more passive complicates provider-patient interaction and leads to miscommunication [13,21], while more active patients receive better communication from health care providers [23]. Looking at the conceptual model of Paasche-Orlow and Wolf [13], finding a way to support patients with low HL to provide accurate and relevant information in a way that is comprehensible to their health care provider will improve provider-patient interaction, which will have a positive effect on their health outcomes.
QUESTIONNAIRES FACILITATE INPUT FROM THE PATIENTS’ PERSPECTIVE
A provenly effective approach to improve provider-patient interaction and health outcomes is the use of Patient-Reported Outcome Measurements (PROMs). A Patient-Reported Outcome (PRO) is defined as any report of the status of a patient’s health condition, behavior or experience with health care that comes directly from the patient without interpretation of the patient’s response by a clinician
General introduction
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