Making Words Work; evaluating the impact of a hospital-based health literacy intervention to improve hospital communication

Background Organisational health literacy, the extent to which healthcare providers communicate clearly with patients and the public, impacts health outcomes. When organisational health literacy is low, communication can be less accessible, contributing to health inequalities. This paper evaluates the impact of a hospital-based workshop that engaged front line hospital professionals to improve organisational health literacy. The setting was the maternity and women’s hospital at a large acute hospital provider in Manchester, UK. Methods The evaluation employed a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative surveys and qualitative focus groups at three time points before and after the intervention. The aim of the data collection was to assess how attendees’ understanding, action and perceptions of health literacy changed as a result of the workshop. Results The workshop had a positive impact on front line staffs’ understanding of health literacy and resulted in positive changes to how women visiting the hospital were communicated with, particularly the written communication that was shared by the service. The focus groups identified a number of key enablers and barriers to embedding improvements to organisational health literacy in the longer term. Key enablers were identified as hospital leadership support, wider staff awareness of health literacy and how patients could be engaged in the co-design of communication resources. A key challenge identified to further improvement was the staff time needed at the start of the care pathway to explain key concepts linked to childbirth which would upskill and empower women for the decisions they may have to make later in their pregnancy. Further work is needed to embed improvements to verbal communication, with many of the positive changes resulting from the intervention so far impacting written communication. Conclusions The health literacy workshop improved staff awareness and confidence and has driven improvements in communication in the short and medium term. As a result of the workshop, health literacy now forms a key part of the hospitals approach to reducing health inequalities.