Patients’ Health Literacy in Rehabilitation: Comparison between the Estimation of Patients and Health Care Professionals

Mona Voigt-Barbarowicz, Günter Dietz, Nicole Renken, Ruben Schmöger and Anna Levke Brütt
Additional contact information
Mona Voigt-Barbarowicz: Junior Research Group for Rehabilitation Sciences, Department of Health Services Research, University of Oldenburg, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany
Günter Dietz: Clinic for Orthopedic and Rheumatological Rehabilitation, Rehabilitation Centre Bad Zwischenahn, 26160 Bad Zwischenahn, Germany
Nicole Renken: Clinic for Orthopedic and Rheumatological Rehabilitation, Rehabilitation Centre Bad Zwischenahn, 26160 Bad Zwischenahn, Germany
Ruben Schmöger: Junior Research Group for Rehabilitation Sciences, Department of Health Services Research, University of Oldenburg, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany
Anna Levke Brütt: Junior Research Group for Rehabilitation Sciences, Department of Health Services Research, University of Oldenburg, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 6, 1-13

Abstract: The term health literacy (HL) comprises the handling of health information and disease-specific and generic self-management skills, especially relevant for patients with chronic conditions. Health care professionals (HCPs) should correctly identify patients’ communication needs and their HL levels. Therefore, the aims of the study were (1) to determine inpatient medical rehabilitation patients’ HL based on self-assessment, (2) to evaluate changes from admission to discharge, (3) to identify HCPs estimation of patients’ HL, and (4) to compare the estimated patient HL by patients and HCPs. A combined cross-sectional and longitudinal study was conducted in an orthopedic rehabilitation center in Germany. The multidimensional Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ) was filled in by patients (admission, discharge). An adapted version was administered to HCPs ( n = 32) in order to assess HL of individual patients. Data from 287 patients were used for the longitudinal analysis, and comparison was based on n = 278 cases with at least two HL estimations. The results showed a significant increase in HL in five of nine scales with small effect sizes. Moreover, HCPs mostly provided higher scores than patients, and agreement was poor to fair. Differences between the HL estimation might lead to communication problems, and communication training could be useful.

Keywords: HCP; rehabilitants; agreement; HLQ; intraclass correlation (ICC); physicians; physiotherapists; social workers; nurses; orthopedic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/6/3522/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/6/3522/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:6:p:3522-:d:772590

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().