Welcome to the
Always Use Teach-back! Toolkit
Making Teach-back an Always Event
Welcome to the
Always Use Teach-back! Toolkit
Making Teach-back
an Always Event
What is Teach-back?
- Asking a person, in a caring way, to explain back in their own words what they need to know or do.
- An evidence-based health literacy intervention to improve patient-provider communication and health outcomes.
- A way to promote health equity through health literacy.
Why Always?
Always Events™ are “aspects of the patient and family experience that should always occur when patients interact with health care professionals and the delivery system.”
Teach-back can be used by anyone sharing important information in clinical and non-clinical settings.
Which path do you want to explore?
Teach-back Interactive Learning Module
This Module helps learners identify and use key elements of teach-back and plain language to promote health equity, safety, and quality, and advance organizational health literacy.
This Toolkit is designed to enable you to:
Describe why teach-back is fundamental to health equity, safety, and quality.
Apply essential elements of teach-back in practice.
Improve your own and others’ use of teach-back.
Make teach-back an Always Event while advancing as a health literate organization.
Media and Resource Library
The Library offers quick access to resources/tools, videos, and selected references.
Updated by Advancing Health Literacy Franklin County through funding from the Office of Minority Health. Operated by the Institute for Health Care Advancement.
Please note: Content on teachbacktraining.org can be used for your personal, professional, and institutional needs to further the mission of promoting teach-back. Please see Permission and Attribution.
IHA is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
Copyright 2025 Institute for Healthcare Advancement
Solutions Center