Health literacy levels and related factors of patients admitted to a district polyclinic in Malatya center

Objective: This study was carried out to determine the health literacy levels of the patients who applied to the district polyclinic in Malatya. Materials and Methods: This is a descriptive and cross-sectional study conducted to determine the health literacy levels of the patients admitted to the district polyclinic in the center of Malatya. In our study, the questionnaire forms we used as data collection tools were checked first. SPSS (Statistical Package Fort the Social Sciences version 22.0) was used for analysis. In our study, quantitative variables were presented as mean ± standard deviation, median and minimum-maximum, and qualitative variables were presented as numbers and percentages. Kolmogorov Smirnov normality test was applied to the variables containing quantitative data and it was not found to be normal distribution (p <0.05). Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis analysis of variance were used to evaluate the quantitative data. In the analysis of qualitative data, Chi-square test was used to determine the significance between the groups. p <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The average score of those surveyed Turkey index of health literacy scale was 15.85 ± 11.07. 78.1% of respondents in Turkey inadequate health literacy Health Literacy Scale categories according to their category, in the category of limited health literacy-troubled 14.0%, while adequate health literacy in the category of 6.3% and 1.6% excellent health literacy category. Conclusion: The study determined that gender, marital status, age, educational status, admission to health institution, and health literacy levels were not effective. Key Words: Health, Literacy, Health Literacy