Why health literacy is key
When you arrive in an emergency department, you are triaged and, depending on your triage category, will have your pulse, temperature, blood pressure, respiratory rate and oxygen saturation measured.
A clinical scenario of a raised temperature, fast pulse and lowblood pressure triggers an Early Warning Score (EWS) that you may have septic shock and your triage category is upgraded and you may end up in the resus area of the department and get antibiotics and intravenous fluids. That may save your life.
Having travelled around the country for the past five years in my retro Chevy ambulance (being ‘‘the ambulance at the top of the cliff’’), I have developed my own EWS.
In this case, it may be days, months or years early in predicting your risk of a workplace injury or medical event.
You don’t know what you don’t know and not being a farmer, a truck driver or a forestry worker, I don’t know what milk fat solids, tyre pressure or chain shot mean, sometimes until it’s too late.
So, health literacy is important because people generally don’t know their health risk until it’s too late.
Some even ignore the warning signs, even when they slap them in the face.
It breaks my heart to think of those I have seen who have gone blind, lost their legs or kidneys to uncontrolled diabetes, whether it’s type 1 or type 2.
It is not uncommon, in my experience, for farmers to test the bloods of their cows twice a year, but their own only every 10 years, and truck drivers to measure their tyre pressure, but not their own blood pressure.
Given that only an estimated 10 per cent of truck accidents are due to vehicle failure and the rest is human malfunction, it would seem prudent to check the health of drivers, as much as we do WOFs and COFs.
Another problem I have found in my travels is that what constitutes a forestry or truck driver medical may be variable. It may be a hearing and vision check, but no screening for sleep apnoea, anxiety or depression.
There are good reasons to not only get yourself checked, but also your loved ones and workmates. Not only are they putting themselves at risk, but you may be at risk.
Do you want to be in the car or the cab with someone with undiagnosed sleep apnoea or type 2 diabetes? Do you want to be on a dangerous worksite with a colleague who is going through a divorce, has no-one to talk to and has difficulty sleeping?
I know how difficult it is to focus at work when your mind is distracted.
So, what drives me to drive my ambulance around the country and write a column each week is to try to prevent you ending up in ED with a high EWS and those that you care about.
So, if you want to see your risk and your own or loved ones’ EWS, download the KYND Wellness app. It will give you a score out of 100 and some recommendations to reduce your risk of ending up in ED. Use the code BKYND4NZ and it’s free. It may save your life.
● kyndwellness.com
● drtomonamission.com/ walkthetalk
● healthythinking.biz
Dr Tom Mulholland is a GP with 30 years’ experience. He’s on a mission, tackling health issues around New Zealand.