Health literacy: A nursing perspective
Graeme D Smith
Abstract
Nursing plays a key role in maintaining and protecting global health. With a workforce of over 28 million, nursing represents by far the largest group of health care workers (World Health Organization [WHO], 2020). The value of nursing has become inherently clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, as nurses worldwide have made a strong contribution as health care providers, educators, researchers, and patient advocates At a time of pandemic, nurses have been required to provide accurate health-related information to patients in an understandable way. Despite increasing awareness of the importance of providing health-related information across the entire health care continuum, it is perhaps surprising to discover that limited attention has been given to the concept of health literacy in the nursing literature. In recent years, health literacy has evolved from its original focus on elementary literacy skills, and it is now widely recognized to include the ability to critically analyze and use health-related information, providing the capacity to engage well with healthcare systems. From a health provider's perspective, health literacy can be defined as "linked to literacy and entails people's knowledge, motivation and competencies to access, understand, appraise, and apply health information to make judgments and take decisions in everyday life concerning healthcare, disease prevention and health promotion to maintain or improve quality of life during the life course" (Srensen et al., 2012, p. 3). As such, it relates to the ability of someone to access, understand, appraise, and then apply health-related information When dealing with health literacy issues, it is also important for nurses to understand that nobody is ever fully health literate. Everyone requires some help to navigate complex health-related situations, as evidenced by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic Therefore, adequate health literacy does not only apply to the ability to read and comprehend health-related information. Ultimately it relates to people's ability to take more responsibility for their health. In this editorial, by examining the current evidence, I aim to highlight the importance of health literacy in nursing, making specific reference to the pandemic, stressing the importance of health literacy in nurse education, underlining a potential link that may exist between health literacy, resilience, and empowerment. Limited health literacy may be a greatly underestimated predicament in the general population worldwide. The WHO has indicated that health literacy is generally low in developed and developing countries (WHO, 2016). Despite this, nurses are commonly known to overestimate patients' level of health literacy. Therefore, regardless of geographical location or culture, it can be assumed that people may have issues understanding health-related information given to them by nurses. When any form of health-related information is created that is difficult to understand, potential health literacy problems will arise. The nursing profession is ideally positioned to help and support those with limited health literacy, including older adults, and the potential benefits of enhanced health