Measuring health literate discharge practices

Abstract

Purpose

Health literate discharge practices meet patient and family health literacy needs in preparation for care transitions from hospital to home. The purpose of this paper is to measure health literate discharge practices in Ontario hospitals using a new organizational survey questionnaire tool and to perform psychometric testing of this new survey.

Design/methodology/approach

This survey was administered to hospitals in Ontario, Canada. Exploratory factor analysis and reliability testing were performed.

Findings

The participation rate of hospitals was 46 percent. Exploratory factor analysis demonstrated that there were five factors. The survey, and each of the five factors, had moderate to high levels of reliability.

Research limitations/implications

There is a need to expand the focus of further research to examine the experiences of patients and families. Repeating this study with a larger sample would facilitate further survey development.

Practical implications

Measuring health literate discharge practices with an organizational survey will help hospital managers to understand their performance and will help direct quality improvement efforts to improve patient care at hospital discharge and to decrease hospital readmission.

Originality/value

There has been little research into how patients are discharged from hospital. This study is the first to use an organizational survey tool to measure health literate discharge practices.

Citation

Innis, J., Barnsley, J., Berta, W. and Daniel, I. (2017), "Measuring health literate discharge practices", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 67-78. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJHCQA-06-2016-0080