Evaluation of health literacy status among patients in a tertiary care hospital in coastal karnataka, India.

Introduction: People with limited health literacy are more likely to make medication errors, and they have less health knowledge, worse health status, more hospitalizations, and higher healthcare costs than people with adequate literacy. The objective of this study is to assess the health literacy status among patients who are able to read and understand English attending a tertiary care hospital by using Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine [REALM] technique and to compare the health literacy levels to educational status and other baseline characteristics.

Material And Methods: A widely used word recognition method [REALM] was used to assess the HL status of 200 patients attending a tertiary care hospital in Southern India.