The Effect of Health Literacy to Using Complementary and Alternative Medicine with Quality of Life: Hematological Cancers

Objective: This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of health literacy on CAM usage and health-related quality of life of hematologic cancer patients. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted with volunteer patients with patients who were followed up and treated in a hematology clinic and polyclinic of a hospital in Bursa. The research data were collected from the "Individual Identification Form" which was developed by the researchers according to the literature, "Health Literacy Questionnaire-European Union (HLS-EU) Scale" and "European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life-C30 (EORTC QLQ-C30)" scale. Results:The mean age of the 81 hematologic cancer patients who constitute the sample of the study was 11% of them use CAT method. It was detected that while patients used CAT methods such as "herbal medicines", "nutritional treatments and additives" and "hot spring" (respectively %37; %35.8; %29.6) once or twice, they use "self-care" (%46.9) and "praying" (%63) on a regular basis. As participants' health literacy mean score was at the limited level with 29.21 ± 12.79. the EORTC quality of life scale overall health status mean score was at mid-level with 53.80 ± 23.64. A weak positive correlation was found between the general health status of the patients and the health literacy score (r = 228. p = 0.041). Conclusion: In our study, the use of CAM of hematologic cancer patients is not common and the general health status improves as the level of health literacy of the patients increases.