Health Literacy in Hemodialysis Patients in Türkiye

Background: Health literacy (HL) is a concept that indicates people’s knowledge and awareness about health and helps individuals management of chronic disease and treatment of their own diseases. Our aim was to determine the health literacy status of patients undergoing hemodialysis treatment and to investigate its relationship with treatment variables.

Methods: This research was conducted with patients on hemodialysis therapy at a hospital in Türkiye. In our study, the Turkish version of the European Union Health Literacy Survey-47.2 was applied to the patients. Medication adherence of the patients was tested by Morisky Medication Adherence Scale.

Results: A total of 152 patients were included in the study. The HL level was perfect at a rate of 7.2%, adequate at a rate of 32.9%, problematic at a rate of 49.3%, and inadequate at a rate of 10.5% of the hemodialysis patients. Emergency admission, missed appointments, number of hospitalizations per year, duration of chronic kidney disease, and drug compliance were found to be similar between groups with limited and adequate HL levels. However, the application rate for cadaveric kidney transplantation in patients with adequate or perfect HL levels (72.1%) was significantly higher than in those with limited or inadequate HL levels (41.8%) (P < .001).

Conclusion: Health literacy was found to be inadequate among hemodialysis patients. There was a significant di%erence in rates of admission for kidney transplantation between health literacy groups. It is seen that hemodialysis patients with high health literacy levels prefer kidney transplantation at a higher rate.

Cite this article as: "eker A, Demirci H, Öztürk M. Health literacy in hemodialysis patients in Türkiye. Turk J Nephrol. 2025;34(1):47-51.