The importance of building trust and tailoring interactions when meeting older adults’ health literacy needs

Abstract

Purpose: Health literacy is the ability to access, understand and use health information. This study qualitatively explored the views and experiences of older adults with varying health literacy levels who had attended a falls clinic on their overall experience of the falls clinic, access to the service and provider–patient interaction.

Methods: Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine older adults using a falls clinic in England. Health literacy was assessed using the REALM and NVS-UK. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and interrogated using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).

Results: Two superordinate themes emerged from the analysis: The importance of trust and relationship building to achieve effective communication with older adults; and the importance of tailoring education and healthcare to older adults’ individual health literacy needs and preferences.

Conclusions: The findings corroborate previous research emphasising the importance of face-to-face communication in responding to older adults’ individual health literacy needs. Building trust in the relationship and tailoring communication to older adults’ individual attributes and preferred learning styles is essential. Healthcare practitioners and managers should consider how service organisation and communication methods can enhance positive and effective relationships with patients. Improved training could support healthcare providers in meeting patients’ personal communication needs.

Implications for Rehabilitation

• Rehabilitation professionals should be aware of their patients’ individual health literacy needs and communication/learning preferences.

• It is important to build relationships and trust with older adults attending rehabilitation services.

• Further training for rehabilitation professionals could support them in meeting patients’ personal communication needs.

Keywords:

• Falls
• elderly
• relationship building
• communication
• provider–patient interactions

Acknowledgements

We thank all the patients and healthcare providers at the falls clinic who participated in this research study or assisted with recruitment.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no declarations of interest. All authors have contributed and approved the final article. I confirm all personal identifiers have been removed or disguised so the persons described are not identifiable and cannot be identified through the details of the story. This research was completed as part of requirements for a doctoral award. For the duration of this research, the first author was as a clinical academic doctoral fellow, supported through a collaboration between Solent NHS Trust and the University of Southampton.