Evaluating Digital Health Literacy Among Patients Attending Outpatient Clinics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.68041/jmmhr.v1i1/05Keywords:
Digital health literacy, Outpatient clinics, Internet use, Cross-sectional study, Health information seeking, eHealth literacyAbstract
Background: Digital health literacy is crucial for facilitating people to access, comprehend, critique, and use internet health information to make decisions. Digital health literacy is a potential barrier to using digital health resources and may negatively impact health outcomes. This study evaluated the level of digital health literacy in the outpatient clinics and explored the factors associated with digital health literacy. Methods: This was a hospital based cross-sectional study of 280 adult patients visiting the outpatient department of a tertiary care teaching hospital from March to October 2023. Participants were selected in a systematic random sampling. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection and contained sociodemographic data, usage of digital technology, and the eHealth Literacy Scale (eHEALS). The data was presented in descriptive statistics and associations between the participant characteristics and the digital health literacy were evaluated by the Chi-square test. The p-value of <0.05 was deemed to be statistically significant. Results: Of the 280 participants, 38.2% had adequate digital health literacy, while 41.8% had problematic and 20.0% had inadequate digital health literacy. Most of the participants had a smart mobile phone (92.9%), internet access at home (83.6%) and searched online for health information (76.4%). Significant associations with sufficient digital health literacy (p <0.05) included higher education level, younger age, and owning a smartphone as well as users seeking health information online. Conclusion: Despite the abundance of digital technologies, a significant percentage of patients who attended the outpatient clinics lacked digital health literacy, or experienced problems with it.
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