Content and Clinical Validation of the Nursing Outcome “Health Literacy Behaviour”: A Validation Protocol

Health literacy (HL) is a result of health promotion and education that has been included as a nursing intervention since 2013. It was proposed, as a nursing activity, to “determine health literacy status at initiation of contact with the patient through informal and/or formal assessments”. Because of that, the outcome ‘Health Literacy Behaviour’ has been incorporated in the sixth edition of the Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC). It collects the patient’s different HL levels and allows them to be identified and evaluated in a social and health context. Nursing outcomes are helpful and provide relevant information for the evaluation of nursing interventions. Objectives: To validate the contents of the nursing outcome ‘Health Literacy Behaviour (2015)’ in order to use them in nursing care plans, and to evaluate their psychometric properties, application level, and effectiveness in nursing care to detect low health literacy patients. Methods: a methodological two-phased study: (1) an exploratory study and content validation by expert consensus, who will evaluate revised content of nursing outcomes; (2) methodological design by clinical validation. Conclusion: The validation of this nursing outcome in NOC will enable the generation of a helpful tool that would facilitate nurses to set individualised and efficient care interventions and identify low health literacy populations.