Title: Health Literacy as Empowerment: A Critical Examination of Patient Centered

Care

Preferred format: Individual presentation

Overview: A patient-centered approach positions the patient at the centre of health

practices, policies, curricula, and pedagogies. In order to practice in a patient-centred
manner, health professionals must take into account the multiple social complexities of
the patient, not the least of which is health literacy.

Health literacy encompasses knowledge, understanding, and access to and control of

resources that promote and maintain satisfactory health and wellbeing. Crucial in the
areas of health promotion, health protection, disease prevention, healthcare maintenance
and system navigation, health literacy is the outcome of such diverse abilities as reading,
writing, numeracy, the ability to access information, and critical thinking.

This paper conducts a critical analysis of the patient-centered care (PCC) literature and
notes the insufficient attention paid to health literacy. Acknowledging that an emphasis
on health literacy will have implications on power relations in and beyond the clinical
encounter, this paper argues that a pedagogical shift that incorporates health literacy
issues into the health professional education will empower patients and strengthen the
patient-centered approach.