I agree with you that health literacy is a serious and real problem in the health care field. Limited health literacy affects a patient's entire health care experience. Patients with low health literacy are more likely to miss preventive measures, which will most likely require rehospitalization. It is imperative for nurses to avoid jargons and use simple language to get the message across. While Henderson’s theory supports nursing as a profession in assisting patients who are well or sick and ensuring 14 basic needs, Orem’s theory is more contemporary where a nurse engages patient in plan of care and guides the patient to be self-dependent in the acquisition of knowledge and skills. Orem’s theory supports that client has the primary responsibility of personal health, with the nurse acting as a guide. Furthermore as long as self-care abilities equal or exceed self-care demands, such patients have no need for nursing ( Hohdorf,2010). However, if self –care deficit is recognized ,nurses should individualize care based on patient situation and must clearly communicate in order to improve and coordinate patient care. In order to improve and coordinate patient care, decisions made by nurses must be individualized to the patient situation, information collected by nurses must be clearly communicated to other health care providers and nurses must actively intervene and suppor

Hohdorf, M. (2010). Self-Care Deficit Nursing Theory in Ingolstadt -- an approach to practice development in nursing care. Self-Care, Dependent-Care & Nursing, 18(1), 19-25.

is approximated that there are 90 million people in the United States who cannot read above a sixth grade level and nurses need to take this into consideration. In the study done by Wilson (2008) he shows that the relationship between maternal health literacy and a mother’s ability