Patient Education: Are We Getting the Message Across?

Title: Patient Education: Are we getting the message across? Purpose: Healthcare consumers are increasingly turning to the internet for information regarding medical and surgical procedures. When an elective procedure is under consideration the internet is often the first resource utilized by a patient. Furthermore, healthcare providers are increasingly referring their patients to on-line sources of patient education material. Currently, the National Institutes of Health suggests information be at the 4th-6th grade reading level to maximize comprehension. Much of the information available regarding healthcare targeted at patients is written at a 10th grade reading level, or higher. The purpose of this study was to evaluate readily available on-line patient education information for readability; being aware of this information will aid plastic surgeons in appropriately educating their patients. Method: Text was extracted from the American Society for Plastic Surgery's website section entitled Consumer and Patient regarding cosmetic procedures; text was also extracted from the ASAPS website's Procedures section. Three objective and accepted methods (SMOG, Flesch-Kincaid, and Dale-Chall) were used to assess readability of each procedure's text. Results: Results from all three of the methods used were substantially higher than the recommended 7th grade reading level. The mean result for the Flesh-Kincaid assessment was 11.83 for the ASPS website and 11.46 for the ASAPS website, indicating a higher than eleventh grade reading level. The mean result of the SMOG assessment was 13.87 for the ASPS website and 13.61, indicating the need for a college level education. Finally, the mean result of the Dale-Chall assessment indicated a greater than 16th grade reading level for the ASPS website and a range of 13-15th grade level for the ASAPS website. Results are further broken down into anatomic categories, all of which show higher than recommended reading levels. Conclusion: Patient education and understanding is a critical factor in planning for surgery; this is especially true of cosmetic and elective procedures. Our results show that readily available online material is at level of readability that is substantially higher than the national average. The ultimate impact of this fact will vary from practice to practice, but all surgeons should be aware of possible conflicts between information distributed and the patient's ability to comprehend that information