Background & Aims
Most people claimed to have experienced body pain at some point in their life. Poor pain management among people with pain appears to be related to worse pain, affect, poor physical function and pain catastrophizing. Previous observations have indicated that many youths resort to medication without seeking professional healthcare advice when experiencing discomfort or pain. Moreover, many individuals misuse medications, even when they have been prescribed. “Health literacy” has been widely discussed in recent years. Highlighting the importance of having sufficient health literacy to access and select existing health information and medical services in a correct way. There is a lack of research on pain-related issues specifically among undergraduates in Taiwan. This study aims to estimate the pain situation among undergraduates and initially develop a Pain Health Literacy Scale (PHLS) specific for Taiwan and to test its initial reliability and validity.
Methods
This study received ethical approval (CRREC-112-124) from the Institutional Review Board at a Medical Center in Taiwan. A cross-sectional study design with a questionnaire survey was employed in this study. We expanded the measuring structure of health literacy questionnaire (HLQ) specific for Taiwan and revised the items’ descriptors by adding symptoms relevant to pain and by modifying the response format to treatments related to pain management. The questionnaire aims to assess individuals’ health literacy concerning pain, encompassing reading, understanding, and evaluating information. A total of 50 questions comprises: (1) 10 questions on health education texts; (2) 12 questions on outpatient dialogues; (3) 17 questions on medication information; (4) 11 questions on medical service systems. Data were analyzed using SPSS 26.0 software, employing descriptive statistics, t-tests, and ANOVA tests to analyze the differences in demographic characteristics and pain health literacy.
Results
To date (May of 2024), a total amount of 210 students has completed the online questionnaires in this study. They are 110/210 (52.4%) female students and 110/210 (47.6%) male students aged from 18 to 30 years with diverse grade levels and mostly high pain health literacy. The types of pain commonly experienced by university students are as follows: headaches (91.71%), muscle soreness (84.39%), sore throat (80.00%), wound pain (74.15%), and toothaches (65.37%). Overall, the score of PHLS was high among 210 students, with a mean of 45.41 out of 50. Significant differences were observed in pain health literacy performance among various grades (p<0.001) and academic disciplines (p=0.04). Interestingly, there was no significant difference in the score of PHLS among diverse university locations.
Conclusions
The results currently show that university students experienced headaches, muscle soreness, sore throat, wound pain, and toothaches. University students demonstrated higher levels of understanding in outpatient dialogue and medication information, possibly due to their exposure to relevant knowledge in daily life. However, comprehension was slightly lower for topics related to the medical service system and health education texts.This study will continue collecting and analyzing data to determine the reliability and inter-item consistency of questions related to the assessment of pain health literacy within the scale’s dimensions.
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