Guide to Creating a "Pill Card" from the AHRQ

How to Create a Pill Card is now available at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) website. A pill card is a simple, visual way to show all of the medicines that a person needs to take on a regular basis.

This guide, also available in .pdf format, can be used by health care professionals and others to create an easy-to-use pill card for patients and their families to assist in keeping track of their medicines.

Step-by-step instructions, sample clip art, and suggestions for design and use are included.

Tip Sheet on Creating Oral Health Patient Handouts

The National Maternal and Child Oral Health Resource Center (OHRC) is pleased to announce the availability of "A Way with Words: Guidelines for Writing Oral Health Materials for Audiences with Limited Literacy".

This resource was developed to assist professionals working to improvethe oral health of infants, children, adolescents, and their families.

"A Way with Words" provides tips to help those who produce educational materials make them easy for everyone to understand, and thus more useful. The tip sheet offers suggestions for how to choose words; set an appropriate tone; and craft sentences, paragraphs, lists, and headings that communicate most effectively with people with limited literacy.

Ideas for how to design documents and how to present unfamiliar terminology are also presented. A list of resources for more information is included.

Single or multiple print copies of this resource are available at no charge from the HRSA Information Center, P.O. Box 2910, Merrifield, VA22116, phone: (888) ASK-HRSA (275-4772), fax: (703) 821-2098, e-mail: ask@hrsa.gov

Electronic copies, in .pdf format, are available at no cost from OHRC's Web site and can be photocopied for use.

Web-Based, Self-Paced Course on Health Literacy

"Unified Health Communication 101: Addressing Health Literacy,Cultural Competency, and Limited English Proficiency" is a free online course designed to help health professionals improve their patient-communication skills, increase their awareness and knowledge of factors that affect their communication with patients, and implement patient-centered communication practices.

The course, developed by the Health Resources and Services Administration, comprises five modules and is estimated to take a total of 5 hours to complete.

The course may be completed at the user's own pace and may be taken for credit (CEU/CE,CHES, CME, and CNE) or not for credit.

More information, including registration instructions, is available at the health literacy training website.

Rhode Island's Health Literacy Provider Toolkit

The Rhode Island Health Literacy Project has developed a Health Literacy Provider Toolkit to "support better communication between consumers and providers, resulting in higher treatment compliance, fewer medication errors, and better utilization of healthcare services". This toolkit is a dynamic resource. As new topics are developed they will be added to the toolkit; the first edition of the HLPT includes information on the following topics: health literacy, advance directives, and cultural competency.

The entire 224-page document is available in its entirety or available as individual topics. Downloadable individual documents include patient forms (durable power of attorney and living will templates for Massachusetts and Rhode Island), topics related to cultural competency such as tips for office staff to enhance communication between staff and patients, physician resources such as articles, quizzes and talking points, and resources for patients such as FAQs about durable power of attorney.

Health Literacy Online Tutorial

A new interactive health literacy tutorial, entitled "Health Literacy: New Field, Now Opportunities" is now available online at no cost. The four sections of this interactive tutorial, developed by World Education and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine/New England region, include: "Health literacy challenge", "Who are the health literacy practitioners", "Successful Strategies and Practices", and "Applying what you have learned".

Listen to the stories of three people who are having a difficult time with information on mammography and breast health, medication compliance, and details related to their job-sponsored health benefits program. Learn about providers who work to help them navigate their way, and test your knowledge regarding the strategies and practices that can assist persons of all literacy levels.

"Health Literacy: New Field, New Opportunities" includes sound and requires the use of Flash plug-in.

Medication Safety Brochure

In preparation for Health Literacy month in October, "Patient Education Matters!" will focus on two health literacy-related resources per month. Today we focus on a new brochure for consumers entitled "Your Medicine: Play it Safe". This publication suggests four ways to ensure safe use and management of medication. Also included is a medicine record form to help track medicines, vitamins and other dietary supplements that includes handy columns such as: "name and strength of medicine", color, "what it is for", "date began taking", "how much to take and when" and "do not take with". Other forms include reminders about what questions to ask before taking medications and a template for recording doctors and pharmacies.

Produced by the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, this 17-page brochure in English, is available free of charge in .pdf format. In addition, up to 10 print brochures can be ordered free of charge from AHQR.