Health Literacy in Nursing Students

The healthcare systems in Europe are rapidly changing, due to the increased complexity of healthcare needs, specifically for the aging population with chronic disease. Patients should be supported in increasing their quality of life, well-being, health outcomes, and self-management (Ahmad et al., 2014; WHO, 2019). Support for self-care is a core component of managing long-term conditions (Wagner and Groves, 2002) and requires the education and involvement of the patients in decision-making by health professionals (Ahmad et al., 2014; WHO, 2019). Among health professionals, nurses play a crucial role in providing care for chronic diseases patients, controlling symptoms, and preventing or delaying the progress of the disease (Cramm and Nieboer,2015; Kuluski et al., 2013), while encouraging their care by enhancing their health literacy (du Pon et al., 2019; Loan et al., 2018). Health Literacy (HL) refers to the literacy-related competence of individuals to access, understand and use health information and services to enable them to make appropriate health decisions to improve, protect and improve the quality of life for themselves, their families, and their communities (Pender et al., 2015; Rudd, 2015; WHO, 2016). Low health literacy is linked to adverse health outcomes, including higher rates of emergency department visits, low ability to manage chronic disease, low medication adherence, hospitalization, and risk of death (Baker et al., 2002; Cavanaugh et al., 2010; Cho et al., 2008). Therefore, it is crucial to prepare nurses to face the challenges of working with patients with limited literacy skills (Torres and Nichols, 2014) and for scholars to actively participate in health literacy research, education, and promotion (Speros, 2011). The aims of this project are: 1) to analyze the Health Literacy level in nursing students. 2) to analyze the curriculum for developing Health Literacy, 3) to analyze perceptions of nursing students about barriers in a clinical placement to develop the Health Literacy competence