Patient Safety
Reading comprehension and cognitive ability are two factors that can affect understanding of health care information and determine mortality among elderly patients, according to a study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Because patients must read or listen to instructions for prescription drug use in many cases, researchers found that those who cannot process the information are more likely to suffer negative consequences.
The authors recommend a thorough evaluation of provider-patient interaction to compensate for patients' reading comprehension and cognitive skills and call for further study into strategies that would help patients understand health care information (Baker et al., Journal of General Internal Medicine, June 2008).