Introduction: Diabetes is a chronic condition which represents a big global problem. Patients with diabetes are subject to different complications which can be prevented or postponed if proper preventive measures are taken. In the process of health education, which is a part of medical treatment, the patients receive a certain amount of health information. The level of their health literacy affects the correct understanding of this information. Therefore it is important that nurses who actually carry out health education, recognize low health literacy early on and take appropriate measures. Purpose: The purpose of the diploma paper is to find out whether the level of health literacy of patients with diabetes type II affects the course of the disease. The paper also sets out to determine which tools are suitable to recognize the level of health literacy and what kind of interventions in health education are needed in order to achieve the empowerment of patients. Method: The descriptive method was used in the research. Domestic and foreign scientific as well as academic literature from the fields of health literacy, the level of health literacy, diabetes and health education was checked in the following data bases CINAHL, ERIC, PubMed, DiKUL. Slovene literature was checked in the COBISS.SI bibliographic system. The search was carried out between August 2017 and December 2019. Literature published between 2005 and 2019 was checked and analysed. Results: In the literature check, 15 researches were included. 11 of these show that by using different tools it is easier to determine the level of a patient’s health literacy. The other 4 researches showed that carrying out programmes of health education and the use of health education interventions affects the patient’s achievement of empowerment. Discussion and conclusion: Literature overview showed that a higher level of health literacy is in most cases an indication of greater knowledge about diabetes and its effective management. Because the purpose of treating diabetes is to improve health results, it is more important to implement different health education programmes and the use of health education interventions where the patient achieves empowerment than the use of different tools to determine the level of health literacy. It is important that nurses with their awareness of the importance of health literacy recognize early in vulnerable group of patients and also take timely measures when the level of literacy is low. As they play a central role in the process of patient’s empowerment, it is important that they make use of the knowledge they have and take appropriate action.
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