Bouguettaya A, Gethin G, Probst S, Sixsmith J, Team V, Weller C, et al.
PloS one. Date of publication 2023 Jan 18;volume 18(1):e0279368.
1. PLoS One. 2023 Jan 18;18(1):e0279368. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0279368.
eCollection 2023.
How health literacy relates to venous leg ulcer healing: A scoping review.
Bouguettaya A(1), Gethin G(2), Probst S(3)(4), Sixsmith J(5), Team V(6), Weller
C(6).
Author information:
(1)School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom.
(2)School of Nursing and Midwifery, National University of Ireland, Galway,
Ireland.
(3)School of Health Sciences, HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts
Western Switzerland, Geneva, Switzerland.
(4)Care Directorate, University Hospital Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
(5)School of Health Sciences, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland.
(6)Wound Research Group, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Monash University
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
BACKGROUND: The level of personal health literacy of patients with venous leg
ulcers is likely to affect their ability to self-manage their condition
impacting on their adherence to treatment and influences healing and recovery
outcomes.
OBJECTIVES: To scope existing research that examined the level of health
literacy in venous leg ulcer patients, to identify how this may link to
self-management behaviours (particularly physical activity and compression
adherence), and venous leg ulcer healing outcomes.
METHODS: This scoping review was based on the PRISMA-ScR six-stage framework. We
searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, PsycInfo and Health, Open Grey,
and Google Scholar for publications examining general and specific health
literacy in those with venous leg ulcers and for those examining any potential
links of health literacy with self-management/healing generally, published
between 2000-2020. This search was guided by a published protocol; studies that
described other types of ulcers or did not examine health literacy were
excluded. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria the initial search
identified 660 articles.
RESULTS: We included five articles. Four studies used randomised controlled
trials or experimental designs to test the effect of specific health literacy
interventions on venous leg ulcer knowledge, compression therapy use, or healing
outcomes. One study was a cross- sectional survey with qualitative elements,
assessing health literacy in venous leg ulcer patients. Broadly, the research
suggested that health literacy was suboptimal amongst those with venous leg
ulcers, and health literacy interventions had limited effects on improving key
venous leg ulcer specific outcomes.
CONCLUSION: This review provides a synthesis of extant literature examining
health literacy in patients with venous leg ulcers. We identified a dearth of
literature investigating the value of general and specific health literacy
interventions in this space. Most importantly, no recent research on general
health literacy and venous leg ulcers was identified, despite strong theoretical
utility to do so. The few studies identified largely indicated that targeting
health literacy of patients with venous leg ulcers is a viable area of research
and intervention, encouraging future researchers and clinicians to consider
patient health literacy in venous leg ulcer management.
Copyright: © 2023 Bouguettaya et al. This is an open access article distributed
under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original author and source are credited.
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0279368
PMCID: PMC9847895
PMID: 36652467 [Indexed for MEDLINE]
Conflict of interest statement: The authors have declared that no competing
interests exist.
