Link: Fantasia Barrino Reveals She's Illiterate - Yahoo! News.
One of the first things I would tell new interns under my wing was to remember that at least a third of their patients couldn't read. (That was my own estimate in our urban indigent population; it was probably generous.) I would tell them this because I learned it the hard way--I'd spend half an hour writing out painfully detailed medication lists and instructions, and they'd come back a week later just as clueless about what they were supposed to be taking. Once I realized they couldn't read, I at least knew what I was up against.
I didn't think about this because I had a hard time grasping it. I still do; I accept intellectually that a double-digit percentage of the population is at least functionally illiterate, but I still just can't grasp it. Reading and writing are just about all I do.
I find that most people will admit it if I ask them. ("Do you read?" is supposedly a better way to ask than "Can you read?".) The best tool I've found is a set of colored markers; if you can get the medicine bottles, you can color-code them. Take the red ones once a day, and the green ones twice a day. Use the pink inhaler twice every day, and the blue inhaler just when you're feeling short of breath. I can usually get this across.
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