A importância do letramento em saúde do tratamento de pacientes oncológicos: revisão narrativa

Abstract

Functional illiterates are completely illiterate people or lay people in the traditional sense or apparently literate people, but whose level of literacy is insufficient for them to exercise basic functions in modern societies. Health literacy in the treatment of cancer patients is extremely important due to its great relevance in the treatment of these individuals given the severity of their prognoses, even though some totally disagree with the fact that “excess information” can be even more harmful to the patient, triggering some psychological problems, but in fact, knowledge, health literacy helps the patient to know how his general condition is and to make decisions he considers wise for a more effective and accurate treatment. Objective: To demonstrate through the literature the importance of health literacy in the care of cancer patients. Methodology: For the realization of this monograph, an online survey was carried out following the axis of narrative review articles and the PICo strategy. Results: The results obtained during the research will be presented through tables, following a qualitative data collection pattern separated by: database, year, journal and authors. During the elaboration of the critical reviews, several types of articles related to the theme of Health Literacy of cancer patients were evaluated, some with more specific themes of certain types of neoplasms, others more generally, however all addressing the specificities of each study and each group or age group studied. Conclusion: In view of the analysis of articles studied for the inclusion of this thesis, we can conclude that cancer patients prefer full knowledge about their treatment and prognosis in general, while their relatives think the opposite about the subject due to their beliefs of that with the patient's knowledge about his general condition can negatively affect the future course of the disease and trigger stress, depression, loss of hope and confidence in the patient.