Readability of Patient Education Materials Available at the Point of Care
- 12 April 2012
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Journal of General Internal Medicine
- Vol. 27 (9), 1165-1170
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-012-2046-0
Abstract
Many patient education materials (PEMs) available on the internet are written at high school or college reading levels, rendering them inaccessible to the average US resident, who reads at or below an 8th grade level. Currently, electronic health record (EHR) providers partner with companies that produce PEMs, allowing clinicians to access PEMs at the point of care. To assess the readability of PEMs provided by a popular EHR vendor as well as the National Library of Medicine (NLM). We included PEMs from Micromedex, EBSCO, and MedlinePlus. Micromedex and EBSCO supply PEMs to Meditech, a popular EHR supplier in the US. MedlinePlus supplies the NLM. These PEM databases have high market penetration and accessibility. Grade reading level of the PEMs was calculated using three validated indices: Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG), Gunning Fog (GFI), and Flesch–Kincaid (FKI). The percentage of documents above target readability and average readability scores from each database were calculated. We randomly sampled 100 disease-matched PEMs from three databases (n = 300 PEMs). Depending on the readability index used, 30-100% of PEMs were written above the 8th grade level. The average reading level for MedlinePlus, EBSCO, and Micromedex PEMs was 10.2 (1.9), 9.7 (1.3), and 8.6 (0.9), respectively (p ≤ 0.000) as estimated by the GFI. Estimates of readability using SMOG and FKI were similar. The majority of PEMS available through the NLM and a popular EHR were written at reading levels considerably higher than that of the average US adult.Keywords
This publication has 27 references indexed in Scilit:
- Readability and Content of Patient Education Material Related to Implantable Cardioverter DefibrillatorsJournal of Cardiovascular Nursing, 2012
- Health Literacy and the Provision of Information to Women with Breast CancerClinical Oncology, 2011
- Assessing Readability of Patient Education Materials: Current Role in OrthopaedicsClinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, 2010
- Readability of ASPS and ASAPS Educational Web Sites: An Analysis of Consumer ImpactPlastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 2010
- Literacy-appropriate educational materials and brief counseling improve diabetes self-managementPatient Education and Counseling, 2009
- Are end-of-life patient education materials readable?Palliative Medicine, 2009
- Why people don't learn from diabetes literature: influence of text and reader characteristicsPatient Education and Counseling, 1995
- Low Literacy: A Problem in Diabetes EducationDiabetic Medicine, 1993
- Readability formulas: Cautions and criteriaPatient Education and Counseling, 1991
- Increased readability improves the comprehension of written information for patients with skin diseaseJournal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 1988