South West London Integrated Care System
Health Literacy Training
Health literacy empowers people to make positive choices. It implies the achievement of a level of knowledge, personal skills and confidence to take action to improve personal and community health by changing personal lifestyles and living conditions. Thus, health literacy means more than being able to read pamphlets and make appointments. Health literacy is an enabler that supports the promotion of equity by improving people’s access to health information, and their capacity to use it effectively.
– World Health Organisation
South West London Integrated Care System is committed to achieving health equity.
South West London Health Literacy training consisted of 3 sessions:
Part 1: Basic Health Literacy
Part 2: Basic Long-Term Conditions
Part 3: Consolidation
Training delivered by Michaela Nuttall RGN MSc.
Previous courses:
Part 1: Basic Health Literacy
Learning Outcomes:
- To have the knowledge, understanding, skills and confidence to use health information
- To have the knowledge, understanding, skills and confidence to pass on health information to members of the community
- To have a basic understanding of what the NHS is and how it works
Part 2: Basic Long-term Conditions
Learning Outcome:
- To have a basic understanding of (preventable) long-term conditions:
-
- Type 2 diabetes
- Heart disease & cardiovascular disease
- Lung disease
- Cancer
- To know more about the risk factors
- To understand what can be done do to modify these risks
Part 3: Consolidation of Learning
Learning Outcomes:
- To have a basic understanding of:
- Integrated care systems
- Primary Care Networks
- The role of pharmacies
- When should someone visit A&E
- Who do you call when?
- How the NHS is funded and how funding flows
- To be able to navigate people within health and social care systems
Who attended previously:
Attendees were asked what they had found most interesting:
“Understanding that ‘health care workers’ are ‘info givers’ and have a responsibility to learn the four aspects of health literacy. An Interesting discussion on how this learning improves the patient experience.”
“Learned a lot. Especially about lung disease and heart disease, which I didn’t know much about before”.
“The importance of signposting clients that have risk factors. Being the voice that’s closer to the people”
“I was happy with the course as at no point did I feel overwhelmed with the amount of information given at each of the sessions”.
“I felt that this training was delivered in a manner that allowed me to feel 100% engaged with the subject matter from the start. I do not believe anything could have been done better.”
“How NHS is being reorganised and delivering services to the residents of their medical needs. How the budget is been used by service providers”
“Low levels of literacy and how that translates into prescription compliance”.
“How to get help when needed”.
“How the NHS is structured and the number of service providers involved in making it run smoothly”.
Feedback from attendees:
Your health is important to us too…. we asked previous attendees how they were feeling and were pleased to see the positivity in results, especially after the tremendous pressure of the last couple of years.
