Promoting Trust and Engagement Through Health Literacy Education: Enhancing the Therapeutic Alliance with People Hospitalized for Acute Psychiatric Care.

People seeking health information online face barriers in evaluating that information, often relying on unvetted sources that may contribute to distress, misinformation, or mistrust of providers. In this project, we piloted a nurse-librarian-led quality improvement intervention: a weekly class teaching people hospitalized for acute psychiatric care how to assess the credibility of online health content. The class was designed to foster patient engagement, improve digital health literacy, and build therapeutic trust. Pre- and post-intervention survey data showed increases in patient satisfaction with involvement in care decisions. Patients reported the class was helpful, enjoyable, and confidence-boosting. This low-cost innovation shows that even interventions not typically classified as therapeutic, such as brief, structured educational interventions, can strengthen the therapeutic alliance by bolstering key components such as patient engagement and mutual trust, as well as enhancing patient experience in an acute psychiatric hospital setting.