Health Literacy: Prevalence among Elderly Care Givers and Its Impact on the Frequency of Elderly Hospitalization and Elderly Health Related Quality of Life

Tomader Taha Abdel Rahman

Geriatrics Medicine Department, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.

DOI: 10.4236/aar.2014.35048                

Abstract

Caring for the elderly is an extremely lonely and frustrating vigil. The care giver has the responsibility of caring for an elderly one to the myriad decisions on different topics such as diabetes care or cancer treatment. Care givers with low levels of health literacy have less health knowledge, worse management of chronic disease and lower use of preventive services. This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of health literacy among elderly care givers and its impact on the frequency of elderly hospitalization and elderly health related quality of life (QOL). The study was carried out on 200 elderly patients and their corresponding care givers. Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM) and Newest Vital Sign (NVS) were used to assess caregivers’ health literacy. Assessment of the elderly health related QOL was done by the use of short form-12 health survey (SF-12). The results were as followed, in elderly patients; 92 were males and 108 were females. The mean elderly age was 69.4 ± 8.8. The mean age of caregivers was 42.1 ± 12.9 years. The prevalence of inadequate health literacy among elderly caregivers was 75.0%. There were significant associations between care givers, health literacy and the frequency of elderly hospitalization (p = 0.001), duration of hospital stay (p = 0.009), and the elderly health related QOL (p = 0.001). The study concluded that inadequate health literacy is a problem among elderly care givers in Egypt. Healthcare professionals must be made aware of this problem, which is to provide simplified educational materials to elderly care givers to maximize elderly care.

Keywords

Care Givers, Health Literacy, Health Related Quality of Life, Frequency of Elderly Hospitalization

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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