Comparison of Health Literacy of Medical and Dentistry Students of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences in 2016

Health literacy represents an individual's capacity to acquire, interpret and understand the information necessary for the required services and make proper decisions in the field of health. Health literacy includes a set of skills reading, listening, analysis, decision-making and the ability to apply these skills in health situations that do not necessarily lead to years of schooling or public reading ability. Present study is aimed to determine the level of health literacy among medical and dental students in university of science in Rafsanjani.
this is a measurement study. A number of 282medical and dental students I university of science in Rafsanjan were studied. To collect data the questioner of health literacy was applied which had been designed and psychometric by Montezari and et al (HELIA). And then data was analyzed.
The findings showed that mean and standard deviation of dentistry students (22.88 ± 3.49) years and mean and standard deviation of medical students were (22.16±2.5) years. Independent t-test did not show a significant difference between the mean age of medical students and dentistry students (p=0.742). In evaluating the dimensions of health literacy among dental and medical students of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences The highest mean of health literacy dimensions in both fields related to the decision-making and behavioral dimension and the lowest mean in the field of dentistry was related to the assessment dimension (14.45 ± 2.46) and in the reading-related medicine category (14.99±3/00).
findings suggested that the medical students have obtained higher average scores than dental student in term of health literacy. In aspects of health literacy highest average in both disciplines related to the decision-making and behavior related to the assessment and the lowest in dentistry and medicine are related to reading.