Functional, Communicative and Critical Health Literacy Among Patient with Diabetes Type 2 Referred To The Diabetes Clinic

Background and Objective: Diabetes is a chronic disease that can cause acute and debilitating complications such as cardiovascular disease, blindness, and kidney failure. Inadequate selfcare and health literacy are major barriers to diabetes management and affect patients’ participation in selfcare activities. This study aims to evaluate the patient’s health literacy status with type 2 diabetes in three areas of function, communication, and criticism and to determine the relationship between these factors and selfcare behaviors in patients with diabetes. Materials and Methods:  A cross sectional study was conducted on 118 diabetic patients referred to diabetes clinic 2019 through a regular random sampling approach. The level of health literacy and its subscales in patients was assessed by a Functional, Communicative, and Critical Health Literacy standard questionnaire. In order to analyze the data, descriptive statistics including mean, standard deviation, and frequency and analytical statistics such as independent ttest and one way analysis of variance, Chisquare test, and multivariate linear regression were performed by SPSS software version 16. Results: the mean score for total health literacy was 25.51±5.7, which is rated as average.  The results showed a significant relationship between functional health literacy and communication health literacy (r = 0.481), communicative and critical health literacy (r = 0.726), and between functional and critical health literacy (r = 0.426). Total health literacy had a statistically significant relationship with functional health literacy (r = 0.456), communication (r = 0.496), and critical health literacy (r = 0.534). Conclusions: Considering that communication, critical and functional health literacy is related to total health literacy and preventive behaviors in diabetic patients, treatment seems necessary.