Pablo Gálvez, a member of the UIC Barcelona Albert J. Jovell Institute for Public Health and Patients, was a speaker at the 49th SEPAR (Spanish Society of Pulmonology and Thoracic Surgery) Congress. Gálvez took part in the symposium SEPAR patients: people understand one another through talking... or do they? The session was set up as a forum in which various topics could be discussed that affect the way illness is experienced by patients and their families. Emphasis was put on the importance of taking into account their experience and abilities in respect of understanding oral and written health information.
Three other professionals made up the rest of the panel, Dr Joan Escarrabill, pulmonologist and Director of the Chronic Care Programme at Barcelona’s Hospital Clínic, Dr Raquel García-Retamero, tenured lecturer in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Granada and Dr Xavier Clèries, psychologist and coordinator of the integrated programme for patient-centred care.
Gálvez spoke about literacy in healthcare. To make his point he contextualised the situation in the United States and Europe and presented different articles that showed the implications on health of this type of literacy. Gálvez ended by introducing a number of strategies to encourage an improvement in the information received by patients, whether oral or written, once again providing examples of the work done by the UIC Barcelona Albert J. Jovell Institute and others.
