The Relationship Between E-health Literacy and Health Failure

Objective: Theresearchwasconductedtodeterminetherelationshipbetween e-healthliteracyandthecaregivercontributionto self-care of a patientwithheartfailure.The study was carried out with the purpose of determining the effects of e-health literacy on the self-care of patients with heart failure.

Methods: Thiswasplanned as a descriptiveandcorrelationalstudy. Itwascarriedoutbetween April andJuly 2018. Thepopulation of thestudyconsisted of patientswhoreceivedtreatmentforheartfailure at thehospitalwhich had a functionalcapacity of class II orhigherbased on theclassification of the New York HeartAssociationandtheircaregivers. Thesampleconsisted of 180 caregiversbypowertorepresentthepopulation. Thedatawerecollectedby a Personal Information Form, theCaregiverContributionto Self-Care of HeartFailure Index andtheeHealthLiteracyScale. Thestatisticalanalysesinvolveddescriptivestatistics, independent-samples t-test, ANOVA, Kruskal Wallis analysis, Bonferroni test, multiplelinearregressionanalysis.

Results: Themean e-healthscalescore of thecaregiverswhoparticipated in thestudywas 22.8±7.8. Moreover, themeanscores of theCaregiverContributionto Self-Care of HeartFailure Index, itsdimensions of contributiontocontinuity of self-care, contributiontomanagement of self-careandcontributiontocontinuity of self-carewererespectively 23.2±7.8, 14.2±3.2 and 13.7±4.2. therewas a positiveandweaksignificantrelationshipbetweenthemeanvalues of thecontribution of reliability of caregiver on patient self-caredimension of the Index andtheeHealthLiteracy Index scores (p<0.05).

Conclusion: Whilethestudyfoundnosignificantrelationshipbetween e-healthliteracyandthedimensions of contributiontocontinuation of self-careandcontributiontomanagement of self-care of theCaregiverContributionto Self-Care of HeartFailure Index, therewas a positiveandweaksignificantrelationshipbetween e-healthliteracyandthedimension of contribution of reliability of caregivertopatient self-care (p<0.05).