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A Reliable Instrument of Health Literacy in Hospitalized Patients: 3‐Question Brief Health Literacy Screen (BHLS)
Author(s) -
Dikmen Derya,
Madalı Berna,
Özdemir Aslıhan,
İnanEroğlu Elif
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.31.1_supplement.640.17
Subject(s) - health literacy , medicine , realm , literacy , health care , test (biology) , family medicine , gerontology , psychology , pedagogy , political science , law , paleontology , economics , biology , economic growth
Health literacy is generally defined as the ability and motivation of individuals to access, understand and use basic health knowledge. Some studies showed that low health literacy is associated with longer average length of stay in hospital and less effective utilization of health care. Aim The purpose of this was to compare the health literacy levels of patients with Short Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults (S‐TOFHLA), Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM) and 3‐Question Brief Health Literacy Screen (BHLS). Method In this study, individuals who were hospitalized comprised of 103 (42.9%) men and 137 (57.1%) women patients, ranged from 18 to 64 years (44.9±13.75 years). In this study, S‐TOFHLA, REALM and BHLS were used to determine patients' health literacy. Questions on socio‐demographic characteristics were also included. Results A total of 240 patients were recruited for the study. On the S‐TOFHLA, 65% of the patients had adequate health literacy. On the REALM, 50.4% of patients were able to read most of the patient education materials. According to BHLS 57.9 % of the patients were categorized as adequate health literacy. It was found that having lower education levels was more common among patients with lower health literacy compared with higher health literacy levels measured with BHLS (p<0.05), REALM (p<0.05) and S‐TOFHLA (p<0.05). There was a correlation between BHLS, REALM and S‐TOFHLA results (p=0.00). Conclusion This is the first study that measures the health literacy levels of hospitalized patients with different health literacy tools. There was a linear relationship between the number of hospitalizations and the health literacy levels. According to our results BHLS provide consistent health literacy levels of hospitalized patients when we compare with S‐TOFHLA and REALM. It can be concluded BHLS is a reliable health literacy instrument.