Cent Eur J Public Health 2023, 31(Suppl 1):S31-S39 | DOI: 10.21101/cejph.a7894

Health literacy and patient rights awareness in ethnic Hungarian mothers in Eastern Europe

Renáta Erdei Jávorné1, Melinda Nagy2, Eszter Molnár3, Réka Zsuzsánna Máthé4, 5, Emese Emőke Tóth-Batizán4, Mária Konečná6, Mária Zahatňanská7, Marta Mydlárová Blaščáková6, Janka Poráčová6, Vincent Sedlák6, Ágnes Sántha4
1 Department of Health Methodology and Prevention, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Debrecen, Nyíregyháza, Hungary
2 Department of Biology, Faculty of Education, J. Selye University Komárno, Komárno, Slovak Republic
3 Department of Engineering, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom
4 Department of Applied Social Sciences, Faculty of Technical and Human Sciences, Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Targu Mures, Romania
5 University of Public Service, Europe Strategy Research Institute, Budapest, Hungary
6 Department of Biology, Faculty of Humanities and Natural Sciences, University of Prešov, Prešov, Slovak Republic
7 Institute of Pedagogy, Andragogy and Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Natural Sciences, University of Prešov, Prešov, Slovak Republic

Objectives: The paper proposes to identify the determinants of patients' rights awareness in mothers and to examine the relationship of health literacy with awareness of those rights.

Methods: Our results are based on data from a convenience sample of 894 non-health professional ethnic Hungarian mothers from Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. Health literacy is measured with the HLS-EU-16 questionnaire.

Results: Analysis of variance reveals a significant association of health literacy with patient rights awareness. Our results show that health literacy is the highest among patients who filed a complaint through formal channels and/or took legal measures to restore their rights upon violation. A logistic regression model is built to identify the likelihood of having high patient rights awareness, that is, acting formally for the restoration of rights upon infringement. The model controls for covariates. When controlled for covariates, the likelihood of having high patient rights awareness increases with age, and is higher for mothers with highest education, for inhabitants of larger towns, as well as for those with adequate health literacy.

Conclusions: The findings of our study have implications for health policy, as they reveal significant inequalities in patient rights culture.

Keywords: health literacy, patient rights awareness, socioeconomic determinants

Received: May 25, 2023; Revised: November 28, 2023; Accepted: November 28, 2023; Published: December 31, 2023  Show citation

ACS AIP APA ASA Harvard Chicago Chicago Notes IEEE ISO690 MLA NLM Turabian Vancouver
Erdei Jávorné R, Nagy M, Molnár E, Máthé RZ, Tóth-Batizán EE, Konečná M, et al.. Health literacy and patient rights awareness in ethnic Hungarian mothers in Eastern Europe. Cent Eur J Public Health. 2023;31(Suppl 1):S31-39. doi: 10.21101/cejph.a7894. PubMed PMID: 38272476.
Share...
Download citation
  • BibTeX (.bib)
  • Bookends (.ris)
  • EasyBib (.ris)
  • EndNote (.enw)
  • EndNote 8 (.xml)
  • ISI WoS (.isi)
  • Medlars (.medlars)
  • Mendeley (.ris)
  • MODS (.xml)
  • Papers (.ris)
  • RefWorks (.txt)
  • RefManager (.ris)
  • RIS (.ris)
  • MS Word (.xml)
  • Zotero (.ris)
    • Open full article

    References

    1. Ducinskiene D, Vladickiene J, Kalediene, R, Haapala I. Awareness and practice of patient's rights law in Lithuania. BMC Int Health Hum Rights. 2006;6:10. doi: 10.1186/1472-698X-6-10. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    2. Roth-Cohen O, Levy S, Zigdon A. The mediated role of credibility on information sources and patient awareness toward patient rights. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021;18(16):8628. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18168628. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    3. Schulz PJ, Nakamoto K. Health literacy and patient empowerment in health communication: the importance of separating conjoined twins. Patient Educ Couns. 2012;90(1):4-11. doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2012.09.006. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    4. Schuler M. Empowerment and the law: strategies of third world women. Washington, D.C.: OEF International; 1986.
    5. Vissandjée B, Short WE, Bates K. Health and legal literacy for migrants: twinned strands woven in the cloth of social justice and the human right to health care. BMC Int Health Hum Rights. 2017;17(1):10. doi: 10.1186/s12914-017-0117-3. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    6. European Commission. Patients' rights in the European Union: mapping eXercise: final report [Internet]. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union; 2016 [cited 2023 Feb 20]. Available from: https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2875/751285.
    7. European Union. Special Eurobarometer 425: patients' rights in cross-border healthcare in the European Union [Internet]. Brussel: European Commission, Directorate-General for Communication; 2015 [cited 2023 Feb 14]. Available from: http://data.europa.eu/88u/dataset/S2034_82_2_425_ENG
    8. Giaro T. Legal tradition of Eastern Europe. Its rise and demise. Comp Law Rev [Internet]. 2011 [cited 2023 Feb 14];2(1):1-23. Available from: http://www.comparativelawreview.unipg.it/index.php/comparative/article/view/45/42.
    9. Kelemen K, Fekete B. How should the legal systems of Eastern Europe be classified today? In: Badó A, Belling DW, Bóka J, Mezei P, editors. International Conference for the 10th Anniversary of the Institute of Comparative Law of the University of Szeged, 2014, Lectiones Iuridicae 11. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag; 2015. p. 197-223.
    10. Páthy-Dencső B. [Research on Patient Rights 2009] [Internet]. Budapest: TÁRKI Social Research Institute Inc.; 2009 [cited 2023 Feb 14]. Available from: https://adatbanktest.tarki.hu/adatbank-h/kutjel/pdf/b280.pdf. Hungarian.
    11. Merakou K, Dalla-Vorgia P, Garanis-Papadatos T, Kourea-Kremastinou J. Satisfying patients' rights: a hospital patient survey. Nurs Ethics. 2001 Nov;8(6):499-509. doi: 10.1177/096973300100800604. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    12. Gerich J, Moosbrugger R. Subjective estimation of health literacy-what is measured by the HLS-EU scale and how is it linked to empowerment? Health Commun. 2018 Mar;33(3):254-63. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2016.1255846. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    13. Birhanu Z, Abamecha F, Berhanu N, Dukessa T, Beharu M, Legesse S, et al. Patients' healthcare, education, engagement, and empowerment rights' framework: patients', caretakers' and health care workers' perspectives from Oromia, Ethiopia. PLoS One. 2021 Aug 12;16(8):e0255390. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0255390. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    14. Mastaneh Z, Mouseli L. Patients' awareness of their rights: insight from a developing country. Int J Health Policy Manag. 2013 Jul 13;1(2):143-6. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    15. Agrawal U, D'Souza BC, Seetharam AM. Awareness of patients' rights among inpatients of a tertiary care teaching hospital - a cross-sectional study. JCDR. 2019 Sep 1;11(9):IC01-6.
    16. Tille F, Weishaar H, Gibis B, Schnitzer S. Patients' understanding of health information in Germany. Patient Prefer Adherence. 2019 May 16;13:805-17. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    17. Örsal Ö, Duru P, Örsal Ö, Tirpan K, Çulhaci A. Analysis of the relationship among health awareness and health literacy, patient satisfaction levels with primary care in patients admitting to primary care health centers. Patient Educ Couns. 2019 Feb;102(2):376-82. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    18. Ursin PK, Haanpää L. A comparative study on children's rights awareness in 16 countries. Child Ind Res. 2018 Nov 9;11:1425-43. Go to original source...
    19. Burgess A, Boyd RN, Chatfield MD, Ziviani J, Sakzewski L. Self-care performance in children with cerebral palsy: a longitudinal study. DMCN. 2020 May 19;62(9):1061-7. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    20. de Buhr E, Tannen A. Parental health literacy and health knowledge, behaviours and outcomes in children: a cross-sectional survey. BMC Public Health. 2020 July 13;20:1096. doi: 10.1186/s12889-020-08881-5. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    21. Dutwin D, Buskirk TD. Apples to oranges or gala versus golden delicious? Comparing data quality of nonprobability internet samples to low response rate probability samples. Public Opin Q. 2017 Apr 22;81(S1):213-39. Go to original source...
    22. Sørensen K, Van den Broucke S, Fullam J, Doyle G, Pelikan J, Slonska Z, et al.; (HLS-EU) Consortium Health Literacy Project European. Health literacy and public health: a systematic review and integration of definitions and models. BMC Public Health. 2012 Jan 25;12:80. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-12-80. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    23. Gács KZS, Kun E, Koltai AJ. [Creating a new, culturally adapted questionnaire of parental health literacy: concept and experience]. Egészségfejlesztés. 2019 Feb 28;60(5):122-34. Hungarian.
    24. Sántha Á. The sociodemographic determinants of health literacy in the ethnic Hungarian mothers of young children in Eastern Europe. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 May 21;18(11):5517. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18115517. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    25. Pelikan JM, Röthlin F, Ganahl K. Measuring comprehensive health literacy in general populations: validation of instrument, indices and scales of the HLS-EU Study [Internet]. Proceedings of the 6th Annual Health Literacy Research Conference; 2014 Nov 3-4; Bethesda, USA. Bethesda; 2014 [cited 2023 Feb 14]. Available from: http://www.bumc.bu.edu/healthliteracyconference/files/2014/06/Pelikan-et-al-HARC-2014-fin.pdf.
    26. Van Schendel RV, Page-Christiaens GC, Beulen L, Bilardo CM, de Boer MA, Coumans AB, et al. Trial by Dutch laboratories for evaluation of non-invasive prenatal testing. Part II-women's perspectives. Prenat Diagn. 2016 Oct 14;36:1091-8. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    27. Lee HS. Research trends in mothers' health information seeking behaviors: a review of the literature. Proceedings of the Assoc Inf Sci Technol. 2016 Dec 27;53(1). doi: 10.1002/pra2.2016.14505301130. Go to original source...
    28. Sun Y, Zhang Y, Gwizdka J, Trace CB. Consumer evaluation of the quality of online health information: systematic literature review of relevant criteria and indicators. J Med Internet Res. 2019 May 2;21:e12522. doi: 10.2196/12522. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    29. Krzych ŁJ, Ratajczyk D. Awareness of the patients' rights by subjects on admission to a tertiary university hospital in Poland. J Forensic Leg Med. 2013 Oct;20(7):902-5. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...
    30. Yaghobian M, Kaheni S, Danesh M, Rezayi AF. Association between awareness of patient rights and patient's education, seeing bill, and age: a cross-sectional study. Glob J Health Sci. 2014 Feb 17;6(3):55-64. Go to original source... Go to PubMed...

    Return to the content