Scientific literacy for seeking medical care and its influencing factors among residents in Gansu province

Objective To examine the status and influencing factors of scientific literacy for seeking medical care among residents in Gansu province and to provide evidences for performing effective health education and promotion.Methods Multistage probability proportional to size sampling was adopted to select 6 487 residents aged 15-69 years from 24 counties or districts in Gansu province and the residents were interviewed face-to-face with Health Literacy Questionnaire for Chinese Residents-2014 Editon from October to December 2014.Results The proportion of the residents with adequate scientific literacy for seeking medical care was 15.7%.Among the residents,the overall correct answer rate for questions in relation to scientific literacy for seeking medical care was 51.8% and the correct answer rate for national policy for primary public health service and the number of national health hotline free of charge were 32.0% and 9.5%,respectively.Of the residents,29.4%,21.6%,23.2%,10.5%,and 18.5% agreed with the view that “all diseases could be alleviated during a hospitalization”,“ a hospital is responsible if an illness could not be cured”,“the longer the duration of hospitalization,the better the treatment of an illness”,“a too short hospitalization represents the irresponsibility of a doctor”,and “all disease should be treated in a large hospital”,respectively.Univariate analysis showed that the level of scientific literacy for seeking medical care differed significantly by living area,,ethnicity,gender,age,education,occupation,family income,family size,self-reported health,weather suffering from a chronic disease,and the health literacy among the residents (P<0.05 for all).Multivariate logistic regression analysis demonstrated that whether having health literacy,family size,education level,occupation,and family income were influencing factors for the residents' scientific literacy for seeking medical care.Conclusion The scientific literacy for seeking medical care is at a relatively low level among the residents in Gansu province,suggesting that health education and promotion should be improved to increase the literacy level among the population.