Determining The Level of Health Literacy and Affecting Factors of Health Professionals Working in Primary Health Care Services

Objective: Health Literacy is important to ensure that the community is involved in health services. Determination of the level of health literacy which is the ability to access, understand, determinate and apply to information on health care, disease prevention and health promotion is important in health professionals as well as in society. Research; is a descriptive study aiming to determine the health literacy level and the influencing factors of health professionals working in primary health care services. Materials and Methods: The study group consisted of health professionals who participated in the primary health care basic trainings in 2017. The 1199 participant's responses to the questionnaire were composed of 2 sections of 68 questions used for data collection purposes. In the first part of the questionnaire; The question asked about socio-demographic information of 12 questions, in the second part; Turkey Health Literacy Survey, which translated into Turkish validity and reliability study conducted for the European Health Literacy Survey was used. In this section, the first 47 questions section; type of quartet likert type (very easy, easy, difficult, very difficult), while there were questions about health outcomes with 9 questions. Results: The majority (66.5%) of our study group which specialist physician, general practitioner, dentist, nurse, midwife and health officer consisted of women. The average age of the group was 34.86 ± 8.28. The average score of participants' general health literacy index was calculated as 37.55 ± 8.11, ？n all indexes higher scores was achieved in men, young age groups, the physicians, with a higher education levels, frequent newspaper readings Conclusion: It is important that the health personnel who should be an example in terms of collective wellness activities should be organized in such a way that the working conditions affect the health behaviors positively so that they can improve their own health