Bulcão, Carolina da Silva; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8203-6805; http://lattes.cnpq.br/1090352145683724
Resumo:
Understanding the Health Literacy (HL) could contribute to men living with HIV/AIDS
developing better conditions for self-management of the disease, as it is a strategy that
promotes greater understanding among individuals about their health condition, encouraging
adherence to treatment and empowering them to make decisions about caring for their health.
Thus, the objective was to analyze HL centered on AIDS self- management in hospitalized
men, specifically determining the degree of LS of men hospitalized as a result of AIDS,
through the domains of scales 2, 3, 4, 6 and 9 of the Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ);
understand and establish a connection between LS and the health outcomes of men with AIDS,
in the hospital context; propose the creation of a manual for health professionals, which
prioritizes continuing education for men in the hospital environment. To this end, a mixed
method, convergent parallel study was developed. The research was carried out on the
premises of a university hospital in Salvador, in the state of Bahia. 22 men participated in the
study, who had received or were already living with an HIV diagnosis. In addition, primary
(interview) and secondary (medical records) data collected by the researchers were used. 5
scales were used, totaling 24 closed questions, and quantitative and qualitative information
were combined through the concomitant triangulation strategy, in order to identify points of
convergence, discrepancies and possible complements between the findings, using measures
of central tendency and variability for continuous variables and absolute frequencies for
categorical variables. The qualitative data was subjected to Braun and Clarke's thematic
analysis. The research respected ethical aspects. During hospitalization, 59.1% of participants
experienced more than 10 days of hospitalization due to AIDS, 54.5% had been diagnosed
with HIV for more than a year and 45.4% had recently received the diagnosis. In relation to
the clinical condition during hospital admission in terms of mobility, 13.6% had difficulty
moving around (bed-ridden or restricted to bed), 95.4% of participants rated the hospital
service as being excellent to good, the display of their health information as being discreet on
the part of health professionals (81.8%), easy to understand the information passed on during
hospitalization (86.3%), with medical professionals (59%) followed by nursing professionals
(18.1%) with the most interacted during their hospital stay. The study revealed that men
hospitalized for AIDS face a combination of physical, psychological and social challenges that
profoundly impact their health and quality of life. Hospitalization generally occurs due to
complications related to severe immunosuppression, opportunistic infections or failures in
antiretroviral treatment, reflecting weaknesses in continuous monitoring and therapeutic
adherence. With this, the need to implement health literacy in self-management emerges in
order to promote lifestyle adjustments and improve the social support network.