Health Literacy

Ask Me 3® is an educational program that encourages patients and families to ask three specific questions of their providers to better understand their health conditions and what they need to do to stay healthy.

The purpose of this toolkit is to help all health care providers learn to use teach-back—every time it is indicated—to support patients and families throughout the care continuum, especially during transitions between health care settings.

A video for healthcare professionals illustrating the importance of using plain language when speaking with patients.

This video from PENOBSCOT COMMUNITY HEALTH CARE looks at 2 different scenarios when talking with patients.

Developed by the North Carolina Program on Health Literacy, it shows a provider using teach-back correctly.

Delivering bad news is always hard, but certain communication techniques can make the experience less difficult for the patient and family. Dr. Michael Haglund, a Professor of Surgery at Duke University Medical Center, demonstrates a bad example and a good example of how providers deliver bad news. The video is based on the work of Dr. Neil S. Prose and filmed with actors playing the role of the parents of a young child. This video was produced by Firestream Media with a grant from the Duke Graduate Medical Education Innovation Fund. For more on how the creators used this video as part of a program on physician-patient communication, read this article in the Journal of Surgical Education.