Our latest blog post is written by recent JV AmeriCorps member Claudia Gomez Postigo (Hillsboro, OR ’15-16) who served as the Minority Community Outreach Coordinator – Hospice Specialist with Care Partners in Hillsboro, Oregon. Below, Claudia reflects on a project she completed with a co-worker that sought to tackle the language and literacy barriers her patients encountered when trying to take their medications.
During my 2015-2016 JV year, I partnered with one of Care Partner’s incredible nurses, Judith Gillen, to work on a project which was initially drafted as a response to the needs of our Latino patients and families. The issues we were first hoping to address were the language and health literacy barriers our Latino patients encountered when managing their multiple daily medications. We created a color-coded system of labels, partnered with a couple of families (both Latino and non-Latino), and introduced these labels into their homes.
The results of the project were spectacular with various degrees of positive feedback from our patients and caregivers. We realized that the problem was much larger than the language and literacy barriers of our Latino patients. Regardless of ethnicity, educational background, or level of literacy, our families were dealing with multiple medications every day, and a system to organize the ones most easily confused made a significant difference. We also came up with a medication chart which included each medication’s corresponding label color, simple instructions, and the symptom each medication treated. We noticed that some patients responded better to the color of the label, while others preferred to use the symptom as the identifying factor of the medication. Both our Spanish-speaking and English-speaking caregivers loved the labels and expressed how they wished they had gotten them sooner.
I was asked to present this project to a board of physicians that our hospice partnered with. After their positive feedback, we were encouraged to put this project on with all patients and families. There are still some areas of this project that need to be evaluated. Now that Care Partners has a greater understanding of its patients’ needs, with the help of this year’s JV AmeriCorps member Megan Andreasen, Care Partner’s next step will be to find an effective system for all nurses to begin introducing and using the labels in their practices.
This past year with Care Partners has confirmed my desire to pursue a future in nursing. I am so lucky to have been a part of the team and family!
