By May 2020, we the nursing students of St. Louis University, planned to decrease the readmission rate of COPD patients by .15% percent. The hope was that the patients at St. Louis University Hospital would not be readmitted within 30 days and would demonstrate an understanding of discharge education prior to discharge. We identified that our health care system has poor ability to assess health literacy and teach patients about their medical diagnosis at a level of their understanding. Patients are readmitted for exacerbations that could be avoided if medical maintenance education was taught throughout hospitalization. Readmissions are causing a higher cost to the patient, which is increasing their cost of living. This increases our cost of healthcare because hospitals are spending more money on medication, care, and equipment. The problem addressed was decreasing the number of COPD patients readmitted by assessing their health literacy score and then educating them about their chronic disease based on their personal health literacy understanding. After visiting the hospital 1-2 times a week and evaluating our patient’s health literacy score, using a tool called the BHLS tool, we discovered that only 13% of patients had an adequate health literacy understanding. We attempted to also use the Newest Vital Sign tool, but the patient’s frustrations and length of completion time prevented adequate data collection. Unfortunately, due to the semester ending early we were unable to obtain a readmission rate percentage for these patients.

The group would like to thank their faculty sponsor Shelley Von Der Lancken for their support with this project.