Health literacy: relationship with the family caregiver role

Health literacy (HL) is a public health challenge. The family caregiver (FC) needs to adhere to the caregiver role to perform this role with good self-care performance. To analyze the relationship between the HL of FC and the perception of self-efficacy (SE) in behaviors of adherence to the role of FC.

This is a descriptive-correlational and cross-sectional study, in which 111 FC participated, users of a Portuguese Family Health Unit. We used a telephone interview questionnaire to collect data, which was processed using SPSS.

Of the total sample (n=111), the majority of FC fell into the problematic level (47.7 %) of General HL. The mean ranking of the HL categories differed significantly in the behaviors of adherence to the FC role "Encouraging the Dependent Family Member (DFM) independence" (MW: p=0.033), "Promoting the use of appropriate clothing for the DFM" (MW: p=0.001) and "Assisting the DFM in his/her self-surveillance" (MW: p=0.000), with FC with a higher level of HL having a higher SE.

General HL relates to encouraging independence, using appropriate clothing and assisting the DFM in self-monitoring. This diagnosis constitutes an important tool for implementing appropriate interventions.