The Santa Clara Valley Medical Center is training physicians to recognize patients who might need more help understanding medical information and refering them to the Community Learning Center. The medical center, it's Community Learning Center and the Plane Tree Health Library are working together to help patients understand their health conditions, provides computer and Internet trainging and offers tutoring for people with a range of reading skills. Materials are available in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

Here is a great example of doctors, medical librarians, public librarians, and others working together for patient health information.

Are you doing something like this at your hospital? Share and tell us about it. Give us ideas as to what we can do and what not to do.

If you aren't doing something like this, why not? Shouldn't you? Isn't this something that directly effects patients and their health that you can do? Granted this project involves more than one medical librarian, but things have to start from somewhere.

***Update***
Check out this article if you are interested in more information on health literacy.
Health Literacy: The Medical Librarian's Role
Page Range: 17 - 27
DOI: 10.1300/J186v05n03_02
Donna L. Beales
Journal of Hospital Librarianship Volume: 5 Issue: 3 Cover Date: 2005