• Chieh-Liang Wu, Chia-Hua Liou, Shih-An Liu, Wayne H-H Sheu, and Shang-Feng Tsai.
• Department of Critical Care Medicine, Taichung Veterans General Hospital.
• Medicine (Baltimore). 2020 Nov 6; 99 (45): e23182.

AbstractA patient support group (PSG) can serve the purposes of group therapy and education. However, how to evaluate outcome which can feedback to improve the PSG remains unclear. Health literacy, which is associated with patient outcome, has not been used in the evaluation of PSG.Since 2017, we had conducted a working group dedicated to the creation and improvement of PSG. We applied a questionnaire (Mandarin Multidimensional Health Literacy Questionnaire, MMHLQ) for PSGs of all kinds of diseases (5 types, 8 diseases). The outcome was evaluated by the MMHLQ (5 dimensions, 20 variables). We determined factors (age, 1st-time/non-1st-time participation, and patient/family participation) that were associated with all 20 health literacy.We finally obtained 458 questionnaires, with a response rate as high as 91.1% in 8 PSGs. Participants were 55.30 ± 16.39 y/o. The highest score was with the dimension of understanding (12.25 ± 1.85) and the lowest score was with the dimension of appraisal (10.66 ± 2.33). Participating patients (compared to family) were associated with a higher score with "obey the instruction of medical personnel to care disease" but lower score with "find health information from the network". Moreover, older participants (age ≥65 years) had lower scores for all questions in MMHLQ, within which the dimension of appraisal received the lowest scores (P < .001).We found that the highest score is with the dimension of understanding, and the lowest score with the dimension of appraisal. The elderly participants showed lower abilities in health literacy, especially with the dimension of the appraisal. Results from MMHLQ can be used to adjust the PSG curriculum to improve the health literacy of participants.

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