Evaluation of e-Health Literacy and Its Predictor Factors among Patients Referred To a Military Hospital in Tehran, Iran, 2017

The rapid development of information and communication technology has impacted all areas including healthcare. Due to the proliferation of electronic sources that provide health information, adequate eHealth literacy of patients seems to be a necessity. The aim of this study was to assess the level of e-Health literacy of patients referred to a military hospital and identify factors related to e-Health literacy.
This descriptive study was conducted in a military hospital in Tehran, Iran in August 2017. The tool for gathering data was the Persian version of the e-Health literacy scale (P-eHEALS) which completed by patients. Simple random sampling was used to select patients. Furthermore some additional personal and demographical variables were collected to explore their relation to e-Health literacy. The independent-sample T test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used for comparison between groups. Spearman correlation and multiple linear regression were used to assess the correlation between study parameters and eHEALS score.
A total of 223 patients participated in the study, including 118 men and 105 women. The mean score for eHEALS was 25.35 ± 8.256, which was considered low. Patients were aware of online health resources and knew how to search, locate and use these resources. However, patients lacked skills to evaluate and differentiate between high and low quality resources and did not feel confident in using the information they found to make health decisions.
e-Health literacy was low among patients referred to a military hospital. Findings suggest they need to develop their knowledge of e-Health.