Relationship of functional health literacy to patients’ knowledge of their own chronic diseases- an Indian perspective

Abstract

Introduction: Functional Health Literacy is an emerging topic of healthcare system which analyses a person’s ability in two aspects- reading and numeracy and is believed to affect patient’s health through a number of parameters. Objective: The objective of the study is to establish the relation between functional health literacy of patients and the knowledge of their chronic diseases. Materials and Methods: Total 50 patients were included in the study suffering from diabetes or hypertension or both for more than six months which reported to the General Medicine department of the two tertiary care hospitals. The patients were assessed for their functional health literacy level and knowledge about their disease by using an instrument Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine-Short Form (REALM-SF) and providing separate questionnaires for diabetes and hypertension respectively. The data collected from the above study was maintained in the MS Excel sheet and analysed using the test of proportion and significance. Result: Out of total 50 patients, 27 patients were suffering from diabetes and 16 of hypertension whereas 7 of both diabetes and hypertension. 14/50(28%), 17/50(34%) and 19/50(38%) patients were found to be with inadequate, marginal and adequate health literacy respectively The literacy scores were correlated with the knowledge in patients of hypertension and diabetes using Pearson’s Chi Square test of significance which was found to be highly significant with chi square value of 19.06 and 18.69 for hypertension and diabetic patients respectively with p value of Keywords: REALM-SF, Adult health literacy, Diabetes, Hypertension.