The impact of parental health literacy on paediatric discharge education: A narrative review

Background: Children all around the world are hospitalised each year for assessment and treatment. Typically, when children are discharged from hospital, parents are provided with discharge advice detailing how to care for their child at home following hospitalisation and treatment, what to look out for in the event of a complication and what to do if one occurs. Aim: To explore how a parent's level of health literacy may impact on how they understand and use discharge information, and to outline the nurse's role in providing health literacy-inclusive discharge education. Search strategy: Between April 2024 and October 2025, three electronic databases were used to conduct a search of relevant literature: Cinahl, Medline and Embase. A manual search of Google, Google Scholar and reference lists was also completed. Inclusion criteria were: English language; peer-reviewed literature. A limitation regarding date of publication was later applied to prevent relevant articles being omitted. Some 18 pieces of literature were chosen for use within this review. Key findings: Following analysis of the papers, two themes were formed, each with two sub-themes. They were: Facilitating a health literacy-inclusive discharge (sub-themes: Measuring health literacy, health literacy-inclusive discharge education); and, The impact of limited health literacy on parental management of discharge instructions (sub-themes: Factors affecting successful discharge education; medication management). Conclusions: Health literacy measurement allows nurses to provide education tailored to the family's health literacy needs. Adopting a health literacy-inclusive approach to discharge by implementing communication strategies such as ‘talk back’, ‘chunk and check’ and facilitating multimodal learning has been shown to increase parental retention and understanding of discharge information. Recommendations: This article highlights the effectiveness of multimodal learning and facilitation of a health literacy-inclusive discharge. Regular staff educational sessions will create consistency within the nurse's approach to discharge education. When confident in their own knowledge, nurses will feel empowered to use these tools to improve the education they provide to their patients’ families.