HEALTH LITERACY OF PATIENTS WITH HYPERTENSION

• Autor(a) principal: Gaiola Mingote, Carlos Miguel
• Data de Publicação: 2024
• Outros Autores: Vicente Conceição Mingote, Cláudia Marisa, Ferreira, Eduardo António, Castelo-Branco Sousa, Miguel, Carvalho Rodrigues, Manuel
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.58043/rphrc.113
• topic: Doença Crónica; Hipertensão Arterial; Literacia em Saúde; Chronic Diseases; High Blood Pressure; Health Literacy

Background: The non-transmissive chronic diseases are considered one of the most challenging problems of public health, which includes arterial hypertension. It is the most prevalent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. In consequence of its silent and asymptomatic character, the hypertensive struggle to adhere to the treatment program, resulting in a non-efficient control of high blood pressure, which will bring up complications related to morbidity and cardiovascular mortality. Due to this, the importance of appropriate and proper health literacy has been highly distinguished, to increase the knowledge and comprehension of the disease and its therapeutic process with particular focus on the control of risk factors, change of behaviors and lifestyle, and promotion of treatment adherence. Objective: Get to know the level of LS of the users that often attend an open appointment of HTA in the Central Region Methods: Non-experimental study of quantitive comparative nature, descriptive-correlational and transversal type carried out, on a sample non-probabilistic of 39 users that attend an open appointment of HTA. To evaluate the level of health literacy was used the European questionnaire of Literacy to “Health Literacy Survey” in Portuguese (HLS-EU-PT), authenticated by Saboga-Nunes e Sørensen in 2013. For the statistic treatment, it was used the statistics treatment program S2tatistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS)”, in the 28 version. Results: The users are majority from the masculine sex with an average age of 57,5 years, married (69,2), employed (59,0), with educational credentials of 1o and 3o cycles, and residents in an urban environment (64,1). It was observed that 84,6% of the population presents a level of “Literacy in general heath” problematic and inadequate and only 2,6% presents an outstanding level, and the most alarming problematic results are in the dimension of “Promoting health” in which 87,2% present a limited and constricted literacy. Conclusions: These outcomes point out to a necessity of the government, healthcare entities, and health providers to keep investing in strategies that promote health literacy, to the empowerment of the citizens, in a way where they can become more active in the maintenance and improvement of their health and in order to improve the management of their illness