Health literacy and liver cirrhosis: testing three screening tools for face validity.

Patients who have liver cirrhosis, which is a chronic and complex disease, have to understand a lot of information, including the nature of the disease and the structure of the healthcare system. It is important for nurses to be able to tailor care to this group of patients. It can therefore be useful to know the level of patients' health literacy (HL). In general, HL is measured through self-administered questionnaires. This study investigated the face validity of three HL questionnaires with a total of 108 outpatients with liver cirrhosis. The patients were allocated to one of 6 groups, within which the questionnaires administered in a different order; the allocation to each groups was random. One-third of patients needed help to complete the questionnaires: these were mostly individuals with alcohol-related liver cirrhosis, low levels of education, who were mostly male. The order of questionnaires was found to be unimportant, as the results were similar across the 6 groups. Measuring HL in patients with liver cirrhosis is a challenge-and the findings of this study indicate that exposing patients to any questionnaire could be used as a rough screening tool.

RCT Entities:   Population Interventions Outcomes