Readability of Orthopaedic Patient-reported Outcome Measures: Is There a Fundamental Failure to Communicate?

CONCLUSIONS: Patient literacy has great influence on healthcare outcomes, and readability is an important consideration in all patient-directed written materials. Our study found that more than 70% of PROMs commonly used in orthopaedics, and all orthopaedic-related portions of the PROMIS(®) are written at or below the most stringent recommendations (≤ 6th grade reading level), and more than 90% of independent PROMs and all PROMIS(®) materials are written at or below an 8th grade level. Additionally, the use of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services guidelines for editing high reading level PROMs yields satisfactory results. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Fears of widely incomprehensible PROMs may be unfounded. Future research to identify the most appropriate readability algorithm for use in the healthcare sector, and revalidation of PROMs after readability-improving edits is warranted. PMID: 28374349 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research - Category: Orthopaedics Authors: Tags: Clin Orthop Relat Res Source Type: research