The Relationship Between Health Literacy and Illness Belief in Patients with Heart Failure

The chronic and complex nature of heart failure has led to raise the need for self-care as the core of care and treatment of the patients. Health literacy and illness belief are factors may affect self-care and the way they can cope with the disease. This study was conducted to determine the association, if any, of health literacy and illness beliefs among patients with heart failure.

This study is a descriptive-correlational performed on 133 patients with heart failure hospitalized in Cardiac Care Unit in Karaj. They were selected by the convenience sampling method. Data collection method included a demographic questionnaire, the Iranian Health Literacy Questionnaire (Montazeri 2013) and the illness belief (Albert 2007) in heart failure.

The total mean score of the health literacy was 73.01 (±13.08) and the total mean score of the correct belief illness was 3.07 (±0.45). There was no significant association of health literacy with illness belief (r=0.130 and P=0.137).

More than a quarter of the patients had inadequate health literacy, and more than 40 percent had incorrect beliefs about heart failure. Therefore, to improve health behaviors, it is necessary not only to promote health literacy, but also to consider incorrect illness beliefs.