NURS 8210 Discussion Consumer Health Information Post your responses to the Discussion based on the course requirements

NURS 8210 Discussion Consumer Health Information Post your responses to the Discussion based on the course requirements

Introduction

Consumer health informatics refers to an area of health informatics which reduces a gap between health care resources and patients.

Synthesizing my Knowledge with Consumer Health Literacy as Evidenced in Context

Consumer health literacy is crucial part of improving effectiveness and quality of consumer’s health care, consumer’s purchasing decisions and strengthening the management of their health. In my practice setting, I evidenced that consumer health literacy is key to quality care and it is related with three objectives of quality improvement, that is; balanced treatment, safety or privacy and patient-centred care (Lewis, 2007). Consumers with low health literacy fail to navigate health care systems to obtain the needed medications, compared to consumers with high health literacy. Consumers with low health literacy may also incur challenges in enrolling to insurance programmes. In my practice setting, I noticed that many consumers were unable to understand whether they were legible to free care or not.  Therefore, I urge consumers to enrol in health care systems to improve their health literacy.

Formulating Strategies to Help Patients in the Application of Web-Based Health Information

One of the strategy that help patients in applying web-based health information is incorporation of interaction. In this strategy, both patients and health care providers are incorporated in a web-based technological system to access medical services. Interaction between patients and medical workers will help medical workers to educate patients about the application of web-based health information (Keselman et al., 2008). An organization can centralize patients’ services to ensure that patients are able to access web-based health information at a single point and for long term. Clinicians may offer timely medical consultations to the patients. This will help patients to understand various uses of web-based health information in health care.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, we can conclude that consumer health literacy play key roles in enhancing quality and improved health care services. Therefore, organizations should embrace in implementing health programs to educate consumers about health care practice. We have also noted the strategies which may be applied to help patients use web-based health information.

References

Keselman, A., Logan, R., Arnott Smith, C., Leroy, G., & Zeng-Treitler, Q. (2008). Developing informatics tools and strategies for consumer-centered health communication. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 15(4), 473-483.