The Teach-Back Method to Build Patient’s Health Literacy

Abstract

The Teach-Back Method is a technique used by health care providers to non-shamingly verify patient understanding of for example, their diagnosis, medications, hospital stay, and discharge instructions. Informed patients may avoid a costly readmission to the hospital. The hospital library can be a resource center for tools on how and when to use the Teach-Back Method. In addition, the librarian can teach, or co-teach, this technique to health care team members. If the hospital librarian is involved in patient education or relationship-based care, they may indeed be practicing the Teach-Back Method during the patient’s stay or when the patient is discharged. This column describes the Teach-Back technique and gives examples of its use in patient discharge. It also features a successful example of a librarian being involved in teaching the Teach-Back Method.

Keywords:

• Discharge
• health care providers
• health care team
• librarian
• library
• patients
• Teach-Back
• teaching

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Helen-Ann Brown Epstein

Helen-Ann Brown Epstein, MLS, MS, AHIP, FMLA ([email protected]) is the Informationist for Virtua Health, an award winning hospital community health system in southern New Jersey. Her research focuses on finding and pushing quality information to support patient care, education and research.