Twenty one percent of the US population is functionally illiterate, meaning that they cannot read and understand simple written instructions. As a result, many patients and their family caregivers cannot use written patient education materials which explain how to manage symptoms and prevent their becoming crises. Instead, they must rely on memory of what health professionals tell them and, unfortunately, recall of spoken medical instructions is often poor. This study investigates if people with low literacy skills and coping problems associated with low literacy can remember spoken medical information with the help of pictographs. Subjects were twenty-one adult clients of an inner city job training program who had less than fifth grade reading skills. They were taught the meanings of 193 pictographs representing instructions to manage seven problems related to cancer and HIV/AIDS. Mean correct recall when shown the pictographs immediately after training was 85% (range from 63% to 99%) and four weeks later was 71% (range from 33% to 94%.) Pictographs representing simple, non-abstract ideas and actions had the highest recall rates at four weeks. These findings suggest that pictographs could improve adherence to medical instructions by patients and their families with low literacy skills. In addition, pictographs may improve adherence among literate patients by increasing their interest and recall of written instructions. Pictographs could be easily incorporated into written patient education materials where they would serve as memory cues for low literacy patients and as illustrations of what was read for literate patients.
Learning Objectives: N/A
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.