Nursing students’ understanding of health literacy and health practices: a cross-sectional study at a university in Namibia

BACKGROUND: A poor understanding of health literacy and inadequate health practices among nurses can be detrimental to a population’s health. The starting point of solving this problem is through the provision of methodical health literacy and health practice education in the nursing curriculum. This study explored nursing students’ understanding of the concept of ‘health literacy’ and their health practices at a university in Namibia. METHODS: A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out among 205 nursing students. A simple stratified sampling method was used and data were collected using a self-reporting Understanding of Health Literacy (UHL) questionnaire. Pearson correlation, independent t-test and One-way ANOVA were used to analyse the data. RESULTS: The overall mean Understanding of Health Literacy score was 13.04 ± 1.52. The majority (n = 157; 76.5%) of the students were found to have adequate health literacy scores, 21.5% had moderate health literacy scores, and only 2% had inadequate health literacy scores. The overall mean health practice score was 32.4 ± 5.50. Most (n = 106; 51.7%) of the students were found to have poor health practices, 44.4% had average health practices, and just 3.9% had good health practices. There was no significant relationship between the health literacy levels and health practices of the students (p = 0.63). CONCLUSIONS: Nursing students have a good understanding of the concept of health literacy, but more effort can be made to translate this understanding into health literacy skills. There is a need to investigate the contributing factors to poor health practices, as well as develop strategies that can support good health practices among nursing students. These health literacy skills could then be transferred into the students' professional careers as nurses. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12912-021-00776-z.