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Assessment of health literacy levels of patients with COPD: a cross-sectional study. (ID 438)
St George's NHS Trust
Funding: Unfunded masters research
Abstract
IntroductionHealth literacy (HL) is defined as an individual’s ability to access, understand and utilise information to make informed health decisions. For patients with COPD the lowest HL levels are shown to increase hospital attendance. This creates health inequalities, and drives poor health outcomes. HL is particularly important in COPD, as the condition is predominantly self-managed. This study aimed to assess HL levels, and explore the relationship between HL and COPD severity.
Methods
A cross-sectional study of HL in patients with a diagnosis of COPD used the Health Literacy Questionnaire and the MRC breathlessness scale to assess COPD severity. Spearman’s bivariate analysis was calculated to look at relationships between HLQ domain scores and MRC.
Results
61 participants were recruited, 56% were male, mean age 70 +/- 7.9, mean MRC 3.2 +/- 1.1. HLQ domains of ‘having sufficient information to manage my health’, ‘actively managing health’, and ‘understanding health information’ scored most highly. Patients with greatest COPD severity had the lowest scores in the domain ‘having sufficient information to manage my health’ (p=0.04, 95% CI: -0.50, -0.01) but indicated an improved ability to appraise health information (p=0.04, 95% CI: 0.48, 0.01).
Conclusion
Findings indicate patients with increased COPD severity have greater self-reported skills in appraising health information, but report reduced skills in having sufficient information to manage their health. Increased skills with increasing disease severity could reflect the length of a patient’s diagnosis, however, the self-reported lack of sufficient health information could contribute to poor health outcomes. This study highlights the importance of considering COPD patients HL levels, as this could be a barrier to successful self-management. Finally, the low self-reported skills in navigating the health care system need to be addressed, to prevent patients failing to engage with services.
Conflicts of interest: None
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