Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Observational Study
Does Numeracy Correlate With Measures of Health Literacy in the Emergency Department?
The objective was to quantify the correlation between general numeracy and health literacy in an emergency department (ED) setting. ⋯ Correlations between measures of general numeracy and measures of health literacy are in the low to moderate range. Performance on numeracy testing was nearly universally poor, even among patients performing well on health literacy screens, with a substantial proportion of the latter patients unable to answer half of the numeracy items correctly. Insofar as numeracy is considered a subset of health literacy, these results suggest that commonly used health literacy screening tools in ED-based studies inadequately evaluate and overestimate numeracy. This suggests the potential need for separate numeracy screening when these skills are important for health outcomes of interest. Providers should be sensitive to potential numeracy deficits among those who may otherwise have normal health literacy.
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This qualitative study aimed to characterize the barriers to informed discussions between patients and emergency physicians (EPs) about radiation risk from computed tomography (CT) and to identify future interventions to improve patient understanding of CT radiation risk. ⋯ The normative view that radiation from diagnostic CT should be discussed in the ED is shared by patients and physicians, but is challenged by the lack of a structured method to communicate CT radiation risk to ED patients. Our analysis identifies promising interest among physicians and patients to use information guides and electronic order prompts as potential informational tools to overcome this barrier.