Health literacy among adult hypertensive patients in a tertiary hospital in South-South, Nigeria
1 Department of Internal Medicine, Delta State University Teaching Hospital, Oghara, Nigeria.
2 Department of Family Medicine, Delta State University Teaching Hospital, Oghara, Nigeria.
3 Department of Community medicine, Delta State University Teaching Hospital, Oghara, Nigeria.
Research Article
World Journal of Advanced Pharmaceutical and Medical Research, 2023, 04(02), 049–057.
Article DOI: 10.53346/wjapmr.2023.4.2.0025
Publication history:
Received on 17 April 2023; revised on 01 June 2023; accepted on 04 June 2023
Abstract:
Background: Health literacy is a concept that seeks to help patients to understand, appraise, use health information and decide on issues related to their health. Hypertension is a chronic disease and global health concern with consequences of increased health care cost and reduced quality of life. Good health literacy level with adherence to medication and good patient attitude are expected to improve outcomes in hypertensive patients.
Objective: The study was undertaken to determine the relationship between health literacy, adherence to medication and patient health attitude so as to expose patients to the concept of health literacy and how they can improve their health.
Method: Following ethical approval, a descriptive cross sectional study of 120 adult hypertensive patients attending DELSUTH was carried out over a six months period. Only those who met the inclusion criteria participated. Data was collected through interview based administered structured questionnaire with closed ended questions. Questionnaire had 4 sessions which included; sociodemography, health literacy level, health attitude and adherence to medications. Data was analysed with SPSS. Health literacy score and patient attitude were graded good, fair and poor while adherence to medications was assessed by asking the patient's if they took their medications regularly.
Results: With p value set at 0.05, there was statistical significance between health literacy and level of education of adult hypertensive patients (p=0.007)
There was also statistical significance between health literacy and patient's attitude (p=0.007)
Conclusion: level of education is strongly linked to the health literacy level of a patient and this inturn impacts patient's attitude to health care.
Keywords:
Health Literacy; Adult Hypertensive Patients; Tertiary Institution; South-South Nigeria
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Copyright © 2023 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article. This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Liscense 4.0