The Relationship between Health Literacy, Health Behaviors, and Self-care in Patients with Heart Failure.

Background: Health literacy (HL), health behaviors, and self-care are considered important in managing heart failure (HF) disease.

Objective: The present study aimed to determine the relationship between HL, health behaviors, and self-care in HF patients.

Materials and methods: This descriptive study's sample consisted of 120 HF patients hospitalized in the cardiology clinics of Atatürk University Research Hospital. The data of the study were collected with the Patient Identification Form, Turkey HL Scale-32, HF Health Behavior Scale (HFHBS), European HF Self-Care Behavior Scale-12 (EHFSCBS-12), and Self-Care of HF Index (SCHFI).

Results: It was determined in the study that 50% of the patients had inadequate HL levels, 32.5% had problematic/limited, 13.3% had adequate, and 4.2% had excellent. The mean score of HFHBS was found to be 60.09 ± 8.75. According to the scores of EHFSCBS-12, 58.3% of the patients had inadequate self-care scores. The mean scores of the subdimensions of SCHFI were 22.87 ± 3.23 in self-care maintenance, 13.62 ± 4.46 in self-care management, and 14.38 ± 3.00 in self-care confidence. It was also determined that there were a statistically significant and positive correlation between the mean scores of HL total scores, HFHBS, and mean scores of the SCHFI subdimensions and a negative significant relationship between the mean scores of EHFSCBS-12 (P < 0.05).

Conclusion: It was concluded that as the total HL score of HF patients increased, their health behaviors and self-care behaviors also increased, and self-care confidence in self-care maintenance, self-care management, and providing self-care scores improved.