Patient education material (PEM) is a key for improving health literacy skill in field of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.
Han A and team conducted a study to evaluate whether the patient education materials (PEM) in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) meets the NIH-recommended eighth-grade reading level. It also comparedthe PM&RPEM with handouts from American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) and American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), which are the previously analyzed patient accessible resources for sports and rehabilitation medicine.
It was a comparative cross-sectional study, which included the websites of professional PM&R societies, AAOS and AAFP for entriesin the patient education section. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL) and Simplified Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) formulas were used to assess the readability.
The study identified 167 online PM&R resources, which were compared with94 articles from AAOS and 65 from AAFP. PM&R and AAOS had Mean SMOG and FKGL scoresexceeding the eighth-grade reading level, but AAFP met the readability levels. SMOG and FKGL levels showed higher reading difficulty for PM&R compared to AAOS and AAFP.
The study concluded that the PEM in PM&R has exceededNIH-recommended averageeighth-grade readability levels. The physiatry community can make more comprehensible and accessible for patient education material by providing the resource at more appropriate reading level.
Reference:
Han A, Carayannopoulos AG. Readability of Patient Education Materials in
Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R): A Comparative Cross-Sectional Study.PM R. 2019 Jul 30.