title: Who gets a teach-back? Patient-reported incidence of experiencing a teach-back.
abstract: To ensure comprehension, clinicians have been urged to use "teach-backs"-explicitly asking patients to repeat back key points of instruction-with every patient receiving new care management instructions. Yet, it is not known whether certain patient groups are more likely to receive teach-backs than others. This study used results from the patient survey of the Communication Climate Assessment Toolkit to examine patient-reported incidence of teach-back by patient education level, age, language preference, race/ethnicity, and perception of sufficient time with doctors. In a multivariable model, patients had significantly greater odds of reporting a teach-back if they were of African American race/ethnicity, had non-English language preference, less education, increased age, or perceived that they had sufficient time with their doctor. This study concludes that some physicians seem to be directing teach-back efforts at certain patients, including those from demographic groups where lower literacy is more common, potentially leading patients who could benefit from teach-back to be overlooked. In addition, the strong correlation between reporting receiving a teach-back and reporting having enough time with a doctor merits further study.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Ethics, American Medical Association, 515 N. State St., Chicago, IL 60654, USA. andrew.jager@ama-assn.org
authors.forename: Andrew J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Jager
authors.forename: Matthew K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Wynia
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D057220:Health Literacy; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians' / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012307:Risk Factors; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors