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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Wilderness medicine is the practice of resource-limited medicine under austere conditions. In 2003, the first wilderness medicine fellowship was established, and as of March 2013, a total of 12 wilderness medicine fellowships exist. ⋯ The final product specifies the minimum core content that should be covered during a 1-year wilderness medicine fellowship. It also describes the structure, length, site, and program requirements for a wilderness medicine fellowship.