Author(s)

Kefah Zaben¹, Amani Khalil²

¹School of Nursing, Al-Quds University, Abu Dies, Palestine.
²School of Nursing, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan.

Purpose: The review aimed to find the best evidence on the relationship between health literacy, self-care behavior and perceived quality of life (QoL) among patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Methods: Searching engines included Cumulative Index to Nursing Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Pro Quest, MEDLINE, Google Scholar, SAGE Journals, Wiley on Line Library, and Science Direct electronic databases from 2010 to 2018. Fifteen research articles assessed the main variables and their associations with demographic and clinical variables. Results: Different methodologies and samples were analyzed: analytic descriptive, systematic review, a randomized control trial, retrospective cohort, a prospective Cohort, cross-sectional, and correlational designs. The fifteen studies showed that the patients with ACS have inadequate health literacy. Patients’ ability to understand basic and complex information or to accurately assess health risks was impaired and may hinder patients’ engagement in self-care. Low HL in patients having ACS is consistently associated with poor QoL. Physical domain of QoL remained the significant outcome of both self-care behavior and health literacy after adjusting for demographics and clinical variables in patients with ACS. Conclusion: The literature pointed to the importance of considering health literacy and self-care behaviors as predictors of quality of life among patients with ACS. However, there has been no previous evidence on the best process of the association between these three variables.

Health Literacy, Self-Care Behavior, Quality of Life, Acute Coronary Syndrome

Zaben, K. and Khalil, A. (2019) Health Literacy, Self-Care Behavior and Quality of Life in Acute Coronary Syndrome Patients: An Integrative Review. Open Journal of Nursing, 9, 383-395. doi: 10.4236/ojn.2019.94035.