The Relationship between Health Literacy and Computer Literacy among Torbat Heydarieh Students of Medical Sciences

Background and Aim: Medical students, as the largest group of health care providers, should be able to combine their technical skills and professional knowledge to diagnose patients' problems and use it to take a big step towards reducing errors and increase the quality of care. For this reason, a study was conducted to investigate the relationship between health literacy and computer literacy among medical students in Torbat Heydariyeh in 2018. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study with a descriptive-analytical approach was performed in the middle half of 2018 on 201 students of Torbat Heydariyeh University of Medical Sciences (THUMS), who were selected by multi-stage sampling method. Data were collected using the Iranian Adult Health Literacy Questionnaire (HELIA) and the Computer Literacy Questionnaire. Then, the data were analyzed with SPSS software, using descriptive statistics and Chi-square test. Results: In this study, 175 subjects (87.1%) were female and the rest were male. The mean and standard deviation of age were 21.52±1.30 and 17.11±0/99, respectively. The results of multivariate linear regression showed that the variable dimensions of computer literacy could predict up to 63% of changes in students' health literacy score. The results also showed that the dimensions of basic skills, frequency of computer use and  self-assessment of working skills with Windows had a significant relationship with students' health literacy (P<0.05). Conclusion: Considering the results, it is suggested that the necessary measures be taken to increase students' computer literacy by holding workshops and Update educational content in universities; in this way, a step towards increasing computer literacy and consequently, increasing the health literacy of students can be taken.