“This thing could lead to imprecise diagnosis and treatment.”This poor clinician-patient communication also results in low health literacy among patients, he said. He described health literacy as people’s capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions. Senior patients are especially prone to forget while ethnic minority groups are disproportionately affected by low health literacy, he said. He also blamed illegible prescriptions written by doctors for the low health literacy. Dương Văn Tuyển, assistant secretary general of the Geneva, Switzerland-based Asian Health Literacy Association, cited many studies that show low health literacy is associated with a high hospitalisation rate.

Source: Viet Nam News September 16, 2016 02:26 UTC