Abstract
Caring for the elderly is an extremely lonely and frustrating vigil. The care giver has the responsibility of caring for an elderly one to the myriad decisions on different topics such as diabetes care or cancer treatment. Care givers with low levels of health literacy have less health knowledge, worse management of chronic disease and lower use of preventive services. This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of health literacy among elderly care givers and its impact on the frequency of elderly hospitalization and elderly health related quality of life (QOL). The study was carried out on 200 elderly patients and their corresponding care givers. Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM) and Newest Vital Sign (NVS) were used to assess caregivers’ health literacy. Assessment of the elderly health related QOL was done by the use of short form-12 health survey (SF-12). The results were as followed, in elderly patients; 92 were males and 108 were females. The mean elderly age was 69.4 ± 8.8. The mean age of caregivers was 42.1 ± 12.9 years. The prevalence of inadequate health literacy among elderly caregivers was 75.0%. There were significant associations between care givers, health literacy and the frequency of elderly hospitalization (p = 0.001), duration of hospital stay (p = 0.009), and the elderly health related QOL (p = 0.001). The study concluded that inadequate health literacy is a problem among elderly care givers in Egypt. Healthcare professionals must be made aware of this problem, which is to provide simplified educational materials to elderly care givers to maximize elderly care.
Highlights
Health literacy has been defined as the ability to obtain, process, and understand basic information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions [1]
This study revealed that only 25.0% of the care givers have adequate health literacy while 75.0% have inadequate health literacy
This study reported very high level of inadequate health literacy among care givers (75.0%); this could be due to the differences between Egypt and the other countries in culture and socioeconomic status
Summary
Health literacy has been defined as the ability to obtain, process, and understand basic information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions [1]. The elderly caregiver must be able to understand and use information in a meaningful way to be able to improve the elderly’s health and nutrition [2]-[4]. In 2004, the Institutes of Medicine, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the American Medical Association all issued reports about health literacy, noting that up to 50% of adults lack the literacy skills needed to function adequately in a health care environment. Inadequate health literacy has been associated with increased incidence of hospitalizations [4]-[6]. Other researchers didn’t find this association [7] [8].
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