Health literacy and self-care behaviors among Chronic kidney disease patients at Kiruddu National Referral Hospital.

Abstract

Introduction: Health literacy is a chief determinant of the care of patients with kidney diseases. It impacts patient engagement in healthy behaviors. Patients with chronic disease who engage in self-care behaviours have an improved health status.There is meagre information on health literacy and self-care behaviors among CKD patients in Uganda. Therefore, this study assessed the level of health literacy and self-care behaviours so as to plan interventions to improve them. Objective: To determine the level of health literacy and self-care behaviours among chronic kidney disease patients at Kiruddu National Referral Hospital. Methods: This was a quantitative study and it involved 196 CKD patients at Kiruddu National Referral Hospital using researcher-administered questionnaires. Data were analyzed using SPSS Version 26. Descriptive data was summarized as frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviation. Results: In this study, 50.50% of the participants had high levels of health literacy with a mean of 49.78±11.19 and median of 51 while 53.06% of the participants had high levels of self-care behaviours with a mean of 65.39±7.11 and median of 67. The least scored dimension of health literacy was functional HL with 13.80±6.55 while the highest scored dimension was communicative health literacy with 20.21±4.57. Exercise, with 5.59±3.66, had the lowest scores of self-care behaviours while medication adherence had the highest mean scores as 22.87±3.21 in the self-care behaviours dimension. Conclusion: The level of health literacy and self-care behaviours was moderate.The Ministry of Health, hospital administrators and health care providers need to review the policies and programs regarding continuous patient education.