Assessing the effect of patients’ health literacy levels on early post operative surgical care outcomes at rural based hospitals in Western Uganda
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Date
2021-08
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Kampala International University
Abstract
Brief introduction and problem to be addressed: inadequate health literacy exposes patients to poorer surgical outcomes yet currently there is a paucity of studies on health literacy and associated impact on surgical care outcomes. Hence, this study aimed to provide an assessment of the effect of health levels on early postoperative surgical care outcomes at the rural hospital setting. Subject and Methods: we conducted a cross-sectional study where patients of sound minds, aged ≥18 years and seeking surgical care or already received the service were requested to participate in the assessment of their health literacy levels, wellbeing, any presence of surgical wound infection, and whether they had comorbidities and prior encounter with a doctor before the current visit. Major Results: based on the Short Assessment of Health Literacy English (SAHL-E), prevalence of inadequate health literacy among the 244 participants was 79.9% and had a statistically significant association with the early postoperative surgical outcomes of pain severity (correlation coefficient, -.594**, p-value < 0.05), wound infection ( .383**, < 0.05), and patient’s wellbeing (.672**, < 0.05). However, no statistical significance noted with having seen a doctor (-0.040, > 0.05), comorbidity (-0.103, > 0.05) or wound site (0.013, > 0.05). Conclusion and recommendation: health literacy’s strong statistical association with early postoperative surgical outcomes could possibly have a positive predictive value that would help the surgical care teams in mitigating its undesirable effects. So, healthcare providers should therefore embrace early preoperative health literacy evaluation in order to enhance the holistic postoperative patients’ care and improve the record systems. Keywords: Health literacy. Surgical outcomes.