The barrier of not being able to read may reduce your ability to do well in the health care setting, influence how you communicate with your physician and, perhaps, lead to poor medical care. Low reading skills are associated with poor understanding of the medical advice, written or spoken, you are given. The results may be a poor health outcome for you. Reading problems may occur if you dropped out of school, if you are older or a member of certain racial or ethnic groups, or just not good with words. Poor reading or speaking in an unfamiliar language can be a big hurdle in everything you do from attempting to seek a correct diagnosis to learning how you should treat your condition.

Efforts have been taken to communicate with many new residents of our country. If you speak Spanish only, you may see a sign noting they speak Spanish in waiting rooms. This likely will help you. Other techniques used have included pictures labeled with captions in different languages. Some attention has also been directed towards making instructions more readable. This means telling you what to do in a way that you understand. The trick is to convey the message in a way that the reader understands without making patients think they can’t read as well as they actually can. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen and you may come away with only a foggy idea of what you have and how it should be treated.

Stronger effort on the part of health care providers could help. Many of them realize that their words aren’t getting through, they are changing the way to they talk to patients. However, it is up to you to learn what you should do before you leave your doctor’s office. If things aren’t clear, you must ask questions. If still uncertain, ask more questions. Remember there is no such thing as a dumb question. You can’t do what you are supposed to do if you don’t understand what you should do and why you should do it. If you feel you have problems with language, take someone with good language skills along when you see your health care provider. It is up to you to understand health care providers of what you have and how it should be treated.
Poor reading and language issues are a big problem in medicine.

Do any of you have any suggestions on how this barrier can be reduced? Do you know of ways of talking with health care providers that have worked for you?