Health Literacy among Spanish-Speaking Patients in the Emergency Department

The majority of Spanish-speaking subjects have less-than-adequate FHL. Self-reported reading ability and years of school completed appear to predict FHL and may be clinically useful. Due to the disproportionately low level of health literacy among Spanish-speaking patients demonstrated in this and previous studies, future efforts should focus on developing programs that improve health literacy by providing this population with oral translations and pictorial and video instructions.