| Nearly half of American adults lack the necessary health literacy skills needed to understand and act appropriately on health information. The purpose of this research was to assess the current state of practice and knowledge of health literacy among licensed respiratory therapists currently working in North Carolina. A total of 335 respiratory therapists participated in this study. Health literacy knowledge and experience were measured using the Revised Health Literacy Knowledge and Experience Survey instrument. Knowledge gaps were most evident in basic facts on health literacy and health literacy screening. Study participants had limited health literacy experiences in activities related to the evaluation and presentation of health care information. Confirmatory factor analysis suggested a reasonably good fitting model to the health literacy experience data, Satorra-Bentler scaled chi2 (28, N = 324) = 57.3, p < 0.001, RMSEA = 0.057, NFI = 0.97, CFI = 0.98, GFI = 0.96. In terms of the relationship between health literacy knowledge and experiences, regression analysis revealed a statistically significant but small relationship between health literacy knowledge and core health literacy experiences, R2 = 0.04 ( N = 329, p = 0.01). Basic facts on health literacy and guidelines for presenting patient information each had significant relationship with core health literacy experiences. The results suggest that the respiratory therapists in this study have gaps in health literacy knowledge and limited experience in assessing and implementing strategies to address low health literacy among their patients. |
