A health illiterate patient frequently skips/misses the appointments, which indicate that the patient is not capable of understanding the written appointment slip, or he has a chaotic system at home to memorise appointment. Incomplete information on registration forms due to overly complicated terms at forms also indicate low literacy level which inhibits the proper framework of medical, person and social history of the patient to make an appropriate diagnosis. It also intervenes in emergency case if the family of the patient needs to be called for sudden loss. The psychologist, counsellor, and medical staff should adequately check the record form of the patient and in case of any missing information; they should help the patient or the guardians to fulfil that form.
Some patient shows noncompliance with recommendation and medication or therapies. Many psychiatrist, clinicians and psychologists get very frustrated with patients who misuse the medications or therapeutic recommendation not intentionally but due to a lack of clear understanding and proper guidelines. They have a lack of awareness about the necessities of the medication, counselling, therapies and the wise use of precautions with diet precautions. Here is a role of a practitioner (psychologist, psychiatrist, clinicians) to guide the patient clearly about the importance of education including all the risk factors. Therefore the patient understands how careless mistake in taking medication can harm their body and how to avoid the unpleasant consequences. Another sign of low literacy may observe in the patient description of disease or disorder and medicines as they feel difficulty to name medications or elucidate the purpose of the medicines or therapeutic sessions. They often identify the pill by their colour and size instead of reading name and the label.
Similarly, the attitude towards the therapies or counselling is very non-serious, and they feel how treatment can be possible without medication. The health literate people also have preoccupied with that mistake. They are also not able to provide the coherent, sequential history. This indicates the inconsistency in thoughts and presenting symptom deteriorate their sense of self-examination. As a result, the recovery from illness becomes more difficult. The practitioner provides his services in clearly describing his disease that not merely helps the practitioner to diagnose the illness but also helps the patient to organise his thinking patterns.
One more significant sign of low literacy of health is patient lack of question if a person does not ask any question about illness indicate that he is hiding her lack of understanding and knowledge. All these signs should be diagnosed by the practitioner and collaborate work with the patient to elicit self-examination and self-management skills. Because the proper the health literacy helps a patient to recover from illness, for example, a health literate female patient with diabetes are aware of her blood pressure, body mass index and cholesterol level. She also knows the diet plan, exercise, and medicines and adopts her health habits accordingly. She takes the effective and safe use over the counter medicines and gets regular examine of feet and immunisation status. Similarly, it would be easy to diagnose a literate female, as she can explain the signs and symptoms of her psychological suffering. Not merely diagnoses but management plan may also design with their help and consent.
Each client or a patient has various levels of health literacy, they prefer to speak a diverse language, and this issue is a severe barrier to understand health-related information. The language barrier limits their capacity to comprehend verbal information. It is obligatory for a practitioner and health care institutions to educate their patient in as possible ways. If a person does not know the sign, symptom, risk and protective factors of his/her illness, he is not capable of following health care precaution for the prevention of illness. The practitioner should diagnose all the barriers interfering in spreading health literacy, and he should collaboratively work with the patient to elicit self-examination and self-management skills.