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Health literacy in an Israeli elderly population

BACKGROUND: Health literacy is important for patients’ comprehension of the health and medical messages conveyed to them and their meaning for them so that they can better manage their health. The aim of the study was to examine the level of health literacy within the elderly population. The hypothe...

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Autores principales: Hochhauser, Michal, Brusovansky, Michael, Sirotin, Maria, Bronfman, Katerina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6621944/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31291986
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13584-019-0328-2
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author Hochhauser, Michal
Brusovansky, Michael
Sirotin, Maria
Bronfman, Katerina
author_facet Hochhauser, Michal
Brusovansky, Michael
Sirotin, Maria
Bronfman, Katerina
author_sort Hochhauser, Michal
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Health literacy is important for patients’ comprehension of the health and medical messages conveyed to them and their meaning for them so that they can better manage their health. The aim of the study was to examine the level of health literacy within the elderly population. The hypothesis was that health literacy would be inadequate, and related to demographic variables. METHOD: Sixty men and women over the age of 65 who volunteered to participate in the study completed a 13-item health literacy questionnaire. RESULTS: Overall, the level of health literacy among the participants was mostly inadequate. They reported difficulty in reading medical material in Hebrew and understanding the doctor, thus requiring assistance (20%); difficulty in reading medical documents, completing medical forms and understanding medical terms; difficulty in reading the leaflet attached to medications (33%), test results (40%) and medical information written in English (66%) and difficulty searching the internet for information (53.3%). The level of health literacy was associated with education while the best profile for adequate health literacy was for those who spoke Hebrew and completed secondary education. CONCLUSIONS: Medical teams have an obligation to be alert and attentive to the level of health literacy of elderly patients and to modify communication and information to an accommodating degree, so that elderly patients can better manage their health. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13584-019-0328-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-66219442019-07-22 Health literacy in an Israeli elderly population Hochhauser, Michal Brusovansky, Michael Sirotin, Maria Bronfman, Katerina Isr J Health Policy Res Original Research Article BACKGROUND: Health literacy is important for patients’ comprehension of the health and medical messages conveyed to them and their meaning for them so that they can better manage their health. The aim of the study was to examine the level of health literacy within the elderly population. The hypothesis was that health literacy would be inadequate, and related to demographic variables. METHOD: Sixty men and women over the age of 65 who volunteered to participate in the study completed a 13-item health literacy questionnaire. RESULTS: Overall, the level of health literacy among the participants was mostly inadequate. They reported difficulty in reading medical material in Hebrew and understanding the doctor, thus requiring assistance (20%); difficulty in reading medical documents, completing medical forms and understanding medical terms; difficulty in reading the leaflet attached to medications (33%), test results (40%) and medical information written in English (66%) and difficulty searching the internet for information (53.3%). The level of health literacy was associated with education while the best profile for adequate health literacy was for those who spoke Hebrew and completed secondary education. CONCLUSIONS: Medical teams have an obligation to be alert and attentive to the level of health literacy of elderly patients and to modify communication and information to an accommodating degree, so that elderly patients can better manage their health. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13584-019-0328-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2019-07-10 /pmc/articles/PMC6621944/ /pubmed/31291986 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13584-019-0328-2 Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Original Research Article
Hochhauser, Michal
Brusovansky, Michael
Sirotin, Maria
Bronfman, Katerina
Health literacy in an Israeli elderly population
title Health literacy in an Israeli elderly population
title_full Health literacy in an Israeli elderly population
title_fullStr Health literacy in an Israeli elderly population
title_full_unstemmed Health literacy in an Israeli elderly population
title_short Health literacy in an Israeli elderly population
title_sort health literacy in an israeli elderly population
topic Original Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6621944/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31291986
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13584-019-0328-2
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