Abstract
Background and objectives: Pharmacotherapy literacy (PHTL) is an individual’s capacity to obtain, evaluate, calculate, and comprehend basic information about pharmacotherapy and pharmacy-related services necessary to make appropriate medication-related decisions, regardless of the mode of content delivery (e.g., written, oral, visual images and symbols). It is already proven that low PHTL of parents can cause serious problems in the treatment of a pediatric population. We aimed to identify the differences in parental PHTL levels, socio-demographic and health-related characteristics (chronic disease of a child, breastfeeding of a child, annual visits to a pediatrician, parental-self-estimation of health status) between rural and urban areas and to investigate the influence of living in rural areas on a low PHTL level. Materials and methods: Our study was cross-sectional with a validated 14-item instrument (“Parental pharmacotherapy literacy questionnaire—Serbian”), which assessed overall PHTL and its three domains of knowledge, understanding and numerical skills necessary for the safe use of medicines. We analyzed 250 parents of pre-school children (1–7 years old) in rural areas and 182 parents from urban areas in Serbia. Results: Every tenth parent from rural and every fourth parent from urban areas had the highest PHTL level or more than 85% correct answers. However, 51% and 28% of parents in rural and urban areas, respectively, had a low PHTL level (less than 65% correct answers), [Х2(1, n = 432) = 33.2; p < 0.001]. Parents from different areas statistically differed in age, education level, employment, breastfeeding and annual visits to pediatrician rate. Those from rural areas had almost twice the probability of low PHTL levels (ORa = 2.033; p = 0.003) than their urban counterparts, independently of other examined parental characteristics. Conclusions: Parents from rural areas have more difficulties to obtain, evaluate, calculate and comprehend basic information related to pharmacotherapy than parents from urban areas.
Highlights
Health literacy has become one of the most important issues in European policy and it is recognized as an important component of health care [1]
As the level of parental pharmacotherapy literacy (PHTL) in rural areas could be the potential for future pharmacist interventions, our aims were to identify socio-demographic and health-related characteristics which differ between parents living in rural areas in Serbia in comparison to parents living in urban areas, to investigate the PHTL among these groups and the influence of living in rural areas on low PHTL
More parents in urban areas were employed than parents in rural areas
Summary
Health literacy has become one of the most important issues in European policy and it is recognized as an important component of health care [1]. It refers to “the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions” [2]. Materials and methods: Our study was cross-sectional with a validated 14-item instrument (“Parental pharmacotherapy literacy questionnaire—Serbian”), which assessed overall PHTL and its three domains of knowledge, understanding and numerical skills necessary for the safe use of medicines. Results: Every tenth parent from rural and every fourth parent from urban areas had the highest PHTL level or more than 85%
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