The Effects of Health Literacy Enhancement Program for the New Case Diabetes Mellitus Type II Patients in Community

Abstract

 This quasi - experimental research was using two groups pretest – posttest design was aimed to study the effects of health literacy enhancement program among new case diabetes mellitus type 2 patients in Khonkaen province. They were divided into 2 group, 21 subjects for experimental group and 18 subjects for comparison group. The experimental group were invited to joined the 6 weeks program those consisted of 4 phases of interventions: 1) Relationship and shame-free zone 2) prior knowledge analysis and medical vocabulary reading skill assessment 3) reading, orally communication and numeric skill enhancement, and 4) feedback and reflection. The data were collected from July to August 2016. Research instruments included health literacy-related DM and self–care behavior-related DM questionnaires those reliability were present at 0.84 and 0.76 respectively. The Mann-Whitney U test and Wilcoxon signed Rank test were apply for data analysis.
The results revealed that total score of health literacy and self–care behavior score within experimental group had significantly higher than before. Even though after experiment, the comparison between 2 groups showed no significant differences of total health literacy score, excluding diet control health literacy score, but total self–care behavior score was higher significantly than comparison group.
The researcher recommends for follow-up study of self–care behavior persistency and also HbA1C blood sugar outcomes. Nurse practitioners should utilize techniques of small group learning activities through local language and health media that relevance to community culture, especially in the elderly with limited literacy.

KEYWORDS : Health literacy enhancement program, Diabetes mellitus type 2, New case patients