Abstract:

Aim: This study aimed to assess health literacy among nursing students. Method: The research was carried out in the spring semester of the 2018-2019 with nursing students (n151) of a university. The research data was collected using a survey form questioning participants' socio-demographic characteristics, and "Turkish Health Literacy Scale-32". Data were evaluated by descriptive statistics, ANOVA and t test. Results: The mean age of the students was 21.01±1.98, 79.50% of them are women and 15.2% are graduates of health vocational high schools. According to scale score mean of the students, it was determined that 35.10% of them had excellent health literacy, 37.70% was sufficient, 21.20% was problematic-limited, 6.00% was insufficient. According to scores students obtained from the sub-dimensions of the scale, it was determined that the level of health literacy was sufficient, only the "Treatment and Service-Assessment of Knowledge" sub-dimension was problematic-limited. There was no statistically significant difference between the mean scores obtained from the scale according to the socio-demographic characteristics of the students (p>0.05). The scale score averages of the students were compared with the type of high school they graduated and it was found that the health vocational high school graduates (47.00±1.60) got higher scores than those who graduated from other high schools (36.40±7.00) and the difference between them was statistically significant (p<0.05). Conclusions: Although the health literacy levels of nursing students were found sufficient, it was determined that the rate of students who were at an excellent level was low when looking at the categorical distributions.

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