Health Literacy refers to an individual's ability to acquire, process and comprehend health related information. Inadequate literacy can lead to increased patient morbidity. However, this
topic is not widely disseminated in health sciences courses, which may result in undervaluing
the importance of adapted communication in proper patient care. Therefore, this present
monograph aims to "assess the perception of medical students from public colleges in Belém
do Pará regarding the theme 'Health Literacy' and how this knowledge impacts their education."
This is a descriptive cross-sectional quantitative study conducted at two medical colleges in
Belém do Pará, Universidade Federal do Pará, and Universidade Estadual do Pará. The sample
included 723 students enrolled from September to December 2022, and data were collected
through questionnaires. The analysis was performed using Microsoft Excel and Bioestat 5.4,
applying the Chi-square and G-test (α=5%, p ≤ 0.05%). It was found that socioeconomic data
and the student's college of origin do not have a significant relationship with knowledge about
Health Literacy. In some questions, there were differences between the basic, clinical, and
internship cycles concerning the explanation of colloquial terminologies (p < 0.0001),
difficulties in establishing doctor-patient relationships (p = 0.0379), prescribing for elementary
school patients (p = 0.0008) and high school patients (0.0003), discussions about more
comprehensible prescriptions in the educational curriculum (p < 0.0001), and lower risk of
morbidity and mortality with Health Literacy (p = 0.0182). Additionally, students who are
familiar with the concept of Health Literacy identify more tests that assess patient literacy (p =
0.0011); however, knowledge of the concept and the tests is low (15.49% and 4%, respectively).
Moreover, the level of difficulty in establishing medical treatment increases with lower levels
of patient education (p < 0.0001). In light of these findings, the subject is not adequately
disseminated in the researched universities, both in the curricular and extracurricular contexts,
and the majority of students are not familiar with the concept and characteristics of Health
Literacy. More attention and research on the subject are urgently needed.
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