Patient Education: A Change in Review

Hospital patient education committees play a critical role in providing appropriate and easy-to-read patient education materials. As previous literature has noted, health literacy impacts individuals of all demographics and effects the patient’s ability to understand the patient education given to them at discharge. In keeping with the movement of organizational improvement regarding health literacy, creating a review process, potentially through a patient education committee, is essential. At one academic medical center, the Patient Centered Education Committee encourages staff members to write patient education geared towards the patient population. With the help of a librarian, these custom written patient education documents are reviewed for literacy. This paper will address the librarian’s role in changing the standard work to include literacy review as well as addressing health literacy.