Compétences en santé déficientes: obstacle à une prise en charge optimale. [Low health literacy: barrier to optimal care]

Les carences en compétences en santé touchent principalement certaines populations à risques en limitant l'accès aux soins, l'interaction avec les soignants et l'autoprise en charge. L'utilisation systématique d'instruments de dépistage n'est pas recommandée et les interventions préconisées en pratique consistent plutôt à diminuer les obstacles entravant la communication patient-soignant. Il s'agit d'intégrer non seulement les compétences de la population en matière de santé mais aussi les compétences communicationnelles d'un système de santé qui se complexifie. Health literacy is defined as "the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions." Low health literacy mainly affects certain populations at risk limiting access to care, interaction with caregivers and self-management. If there are screening tests, their routine use is not advisable and recommended interventions in practice consist rather to reduce barriers to patient-caregiver communication. It is thus important to include not only population's health literacy but also communication skills of a health system wich tend to become more complex

How physicians make sense of their experience of being involved in hospital users' complaints and the associated mediation.

The growing interest in hospital users' complaints appears to be consistent with recent changes in health care, which considers the patient's voice a valuable information source to improve health care. Based on the assumption that the clinicians' lived experience is an essential element of health care and to neglect it may have serious consequences, this study aimed to explore how physicians experience hospital users' complaints and the associated mediation process. A qualitative analysis of experience narrative interviews. Fourteen physicians concerned by complaints which resulted in a mediation provided a comprehensive narrative of their experience with the complaints center. Data were analyzed with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Interviews were analyzed inductively and iteratively to explore how physicians make sense of their experience. The analysis of the physicians' narratives revealed that being the object of a complaint and to enter a process of mediation is a specific experience of which some physicians benefited and others felt psychologically weakened. The causes of the complaints were at times considered by physicians to be related to medical malpractice, but more often to communicational and relational difficulties, unrealistic expectations of patients, physicians' attitudes, or the lack of a coherent care plan. The analysis of their narratives revealed that physicians showed a need for reconsidering and elaborating on the reason(s) leading to the complaint, and on the expectations patients/relatives may have had towards medicine and health care professionals. This may be interpreted as an attempt to assign their meaning, such meaning having the potential to ease the distress associated with the experience of complaints. Most physicians appeared more aware of the communicational and relational aspects of care after experiencing a complaint situation; however, prior to the complaint, physicians seem to have underestimate these issues, and when they acknowledge that the complaint originated in psychological aspects of care, they still consider it not relevant, since not related to clinical decision-making and management. Mediation as providing the opportunity to restore the clinical relationship should be encouraged at an institutional level as well as support of health care professionals by means of individual or group supervision

Meeting physicians' needs: a bottom-up approach for improving the implementation of medical knowledge into practice.

Multiple barriers to knowledge translation in medicine have been identified (ranging from information overload to abstraction of models), leading to important implementation gaps. This study aimed at assessing the suggestions of practicing physicians for possible improvements of knowledge translation (KT) effectiveness into clinical practice. We used a mixed methods design. French- German- and Italian-speaking general practitioners, psychiatrists, orthopaedic surgeons, cardiologists, and diabetologists practicing in Switzerland were interrogated through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and an online survey. A total of 985 physicians from three regions of Switzerland participated in the online survey, whereas 39 participated in focus group discussions and 14 in face-to-face interviews. Physicians expressed limitations and difficulties related to KT into their daily practice. Several barriers were identified, including influence and pressure of pharmaceutical companies, non-publication of negative results, mismatch between guidelines and practice, education gaps, and insufficient collaboration between research and practice. Suggestions to overcome barriers were improving education concerning the evaluation of scientific publications, expanding applicability of guidelines, having free and easy access to independent journals, developing collaborations between research and practice, and creating tools to facilitate access to medical information. Our study provides suggestions for improving KT into daily medical practice, matching the views, needs and preferences of practicing physicians. Responding to suggestions for improvements brought up by physicians may lead to better knowledge translation, higher professional satisfaction, and better healthcare outcomes