Education to Improve Patient Care
Wednesday, 3:37 AM: I am often asked, “Where do you
find the time?” “Why
do you make the effort to write this column on a weekly basis?”
“Couldn’t you just do it every other week or once a
month?” The answer to
the first question is that I have never been able to “find time”.
Since I began writing this column nearly three years ago I made
the commitment to deliberately allocate some of my time to teaching,
especially to health and science education.
This is a primary role of a physician.
Although I am a neurosurgeon, and my license to practice medicine in
Missouri states “Physician and Surgeon”, I believe that the
ethical application of surgery is by being a physician first and a
surgeon second. As a
physician, I have learned the value of education, both formal and
informal, and that is why I give back some time each week to teaching.
I believe that if people have a good understanding of health
and science issues we will communicate more effectively and this will
strengthen our patient-physician relationship.
Health and science literacy in the United States is,
in some ways, surprisingly low for living in the “information
age”. The problem is
that the information on these important topics has mushroomed
disproportionately large compared to the relatively little media
coverage in these areas. Our world has fast become scientific and technological, yet
despite our many marvelous achievements a vast segment of our society
is plagued by scientific illiteracy.
The National Science Foundation surveyed adult Americans and
revealed that more than half are unaware that the earth orbits the sun
yearly. Less than 1 out of 10 can define a molecule and 80 percent
cannot define DNA. (This makes me think of a man that I once saw
protesting the proposed relocation of a genetic engineering company to
a site within his hometown. He
paced the roadway at this proposed site carrying a placard stating,
“They’re trying to bring DNA here!”)
Nearly 1 out of 7 American adults could not locate the United
States on an unlabeled world map!
This problem is not exclusively American. Japan and other countries face a similar paucity of
scientific literacy.
Overall, our intellectual repository is weakening and
this is likely to present grave consequences. A modicum of scientific understanding is necessary for
informed public support, and it is public support that influences the
political decisions about important, and especially expensive,
medical, scientific, and environmental issues.
What is the common denominator?
Brains—educated brains! All of this is further compounded by
general illiteracy. In
1992 the largest study of functional literacy in the United States
found that 21 percent of adults could not read the front page of a
newspaper and 48 percent could not read and understand a bus schedule.
Recently the American Medical Association Foundation
recognized the importance of health and science literacy to improve
the healthcare of Americans. They
have developed a Partnership in Health program to initiate a bridge of
the communications gap between physicians and their patients. This
campaign is the first stage of a nationwide effort to combat health
illiteracy.
We are fortunate in this community that our newspaper
and other news media dedicate column inches and time to cover these
important issues. We
should let them know that this is valuable to us and we should thank
them.
World Wide Web
Resources
AMA Foundation at:
www.AMA-ASSN.org
This site provides further detail about the “Partnership in
Health---improving the patient-physician relationship through health
literacy”
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