Effect of Health Literacy Program on Self-care Behaviors of Hypertension Patients receiving Services in Chronic Disease Clinic at Ban Pho Hospital

Abstract

This is a quasi-experimental research study with a two-group pre-post-test control group design. It aims to study the effect of a health literacy program on the self-care behaviors of hypertension patients receiving services in a chronic disease clinic at Ban Pho Hospital. The sample group consisted of 60 hypertension patients who could not control their blood pressure levels and were treated in a chronic disease clinic at Ban Pho Hospital, divided into two groups: an experimental group of 30 people and a control group of 30 people. Using simple random sampling from a list of patients, they were assigned to the experimental group and the comparison group. There are two types of instruments used in this research: 1) instruments used to collect data, consisting of a general information questionnaire, the health literacy assessment form and the self-care behavior assessment, that have a CVI value between 0.72 and 0.94 and a Cronbach's alpha coefficient between 0.70 and 0.87, and 2) the instruments used in the experiment, are a health literacy program that a CVI value of 0.94. The researcher conducted collect the data yourself. The experiment was conducted, and data was collected between June 2023 to August 2023. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and t-test statistics.

The results showed that the experimental group had a mean of overall self-care behaviors at the high level (M = 43.50, SD = 4.24), and the mean was significantly higher than before the program at the 0.05 level (t =-19.373, p-value <.001). The experimental group that received the health literacy program had significantly higher mean self-care behaviors among hypertension patients than the control group receiving regular nursing care in the chronic disease clinic at Ban Pho Hospital, statistically at the 0.05 level (t =-6.919, p-value <.001).

This study suggests that the method of promoting health literacy according to the program created by the researchers should be used as a guideline for providing care to patients with high blood pressure so that they can change their own behavior to control their care. Blood pressure can be kept within normal limits.