M2 Discussion instructions
A two-year-old is diagnosed with an inner ear infection and prescribed an antibiotic. Her mother understands that her daughter should take the prescribed medication twice a day. After carefully studying the label on the bottle and deciding that it doesn’t tell how to take the medicine, she fills a teaspoon and pours the antibiotic into her daughter’s painful ear.
Explain how health literacy could have resulted in the problem described above.
To prepare you post, do these three items first:
1. Read the case carefully.
2. Review the Health Literacy Framework provided in the Institutes of Medicine Reading (Figure 2-1 on page 33). Make sure that you review the readings that explain the framework. In addition, listen to the lecture for this week.
3. Draw out the framework on a piece of paper. Now think about the case and jot down notes in each section of the framework regarding the case. For example, jot down some individual factors and some factors regarding the health context that could have impacted the case. Do this for all of the components in the framework.
Now you are ready to post your ideas.
1. Write 5-6 sentences describing how you think health literacy may have contributed to the problem above, using your notes and the framework to organize your response and making sure to reference each component of the framework.
2. Review the sections of your reading on assessment of health literacy and discuss the examples of assessment instruments provided in the e-reserves readings for this week.
3. What are examples of socioeconomic variables? To what extent are socioeconomic variables important in assessing risk for limited health literacy? For what reason should we be careful about only using socioeconomic variables to determine health literacy level?
4. Use this information to describe in 3-4 sentences what the pediatrician could have done in his or her office to assess the mother’s health literacy.
Example of how it should look like
