The health literacy, self-care, and medication hassles of patients with heart failure and their caregivers

Aleda M Hess, Purdue University

Abstract

Nearly 90 million Americans lack the necessary health literacy skills to adequately care for themselves in the face of a complex healthcare system and self-care regimens. Patients with heart failure are particularly challenged by meeting with multiple healthcare providers, who may emphasize different self-care strategies, which can be difficult for patients to interpret. Understanding how to effectively care for one's self is thought to improve heart failure symptoms and patient outcomes. Little is known about how health literacy influences self-care in patients with heart failure. The primary objective of this project was to examine the association between patient health literacy level and self-care. The Short-Form Test of Functional Health Literacy (S-TOFHLA) was used to measure health literacy and the Self-Care Index of Heart Failure (SCHFI) was used to measure self-care. The SCHFI has three subscales which measure different components of self-care: maintenance, management, and confidence. Pearson correlations were used to determine the association between S-TOFHLA score and SCHFI subscale score. S-TOFHLA scores were positively correlated with self-care maintenance (0.385, p<0.01) and self-care confidence (0.380, p<0.01) and negatively correlated with self-care management (-0.360, p<0.01). Individuals with higher health literacy were more likely to perform self-care maintenance and have more confidence in their self-care ability. However, individuals with lower health literacy were more likely to perform self-care management of symptoms. Higher educational attainment, male gender, younger age (<65 years old), recruitment from Community Health Network’s heart failure clinic, at least one hour of exercise within the past week, and being married were associated with higher mean scores on the S-TOFHLA. Limitations of this study include small sample size, lack of participants with inadequate and marginal health literacy, and the variance of time since diagnosis among participants.

Degree

M.S.

Advisors

Plake, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Nursing|Pharmacy sciences

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