Evaluation of Health Literacy Levels in Patients in the Emergency Department of a University Hospital: A...

Aim: This study aimed to assess the health literacy (HL) levels of patients visiting the emergency department of a university hospital and identify related factors. Methods: This cross-sectional study aimed to assess the health literacy levels of patients visiting the emergency department of a university hospital, and to identify related factors. The re-quired sample size was at least 384 individuals, assuming an inadequate HL level of 50%, with 95% confidence interval and 5% margin of error. Data were collected through a two-part questionnaire designed by the researchers. The first part covered the patients' socio-demographic characteristics and details regarding their emergency department visits. Meanwhile, the second part included the widely used Chew's short questions to assess inadequate HL. The analysis was conducted using IBM SPSS version 27.0. Descriptive sta-tistics, including frequency, percentage, and mean, were used to summarize the charac-teristics of the study group. The Chi-square test was applied for data analysis. Results: The study group included 58% (n = 250) female and 42% (n = 181) male. Their ages ranged from 18 to 64 years, with a mean (SD) of 29.6 (10.8) and a median of 26.0. In terms of HL levels, 197 individuals (45.7%) had inadequate HL. The frequency of inadequate HL was higher in individuals over the age of 40 years and those with an education level of ≤8 years (p < 0.05 for each). A total of 39.2% (n = 169) of the patients had visited the emergency department multiple times for their current complaints, whereas 243 participants (56.4%) visited the emergency department for a different reason within the past six months. Conclusions: In our study, four out of ten individuals had inadequate HL, and the frequency of repeated emergency department visits was quite high. No statistically significant association was found between emergency department usage characteristics and health literacy levels in the present sample, highlighting the need for larger longitudinal studies with adjusted analyses.