Medical Textbooks: Can Lay People Read and Understand Them?

The proliferation of health information has created a rich field of resources that many lay people can use to make informed health care decisions. For a large segment of the population, these resources will go unseen and unused because they are written at a level that exceeds their reading recognition and comprehension skills. The study discussed in this article assessed the readability of information on six adult and two juvenile diseases in ten medical textbooks. Students in two library and information science (LIS) schools read the same information and indicated the words they did not understand. Results showed that the medical material is written well above the average person’s reading ability. Words the students could not understand included anatomical and disease-related terms and drug names. More research needs to be done on lay people’s comprehension of medical information. On their Web site the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (n.d.) states that “more than 40 percent of working-age adults in the United States lack the skills and education needed to succeed in family, work, and community life today.” This figure indicates that almost half of the population may not be able to find, read, or understand health information and thus cannot make informed health care decisions. A considerable amount of research exists on the need to improve access to health information by making it more readable for average readers.

[1]  L. G. Doak,et al.  Teaching Patients With Low Literacy Skills , 1985 .

[2]  G. Steele,et al.  Cancer: Principles and Practice of Oncology , 1983 .

[3]  A Estey,et al.  Patient's understanding of health information: a multihospital comparison. , 1994, Patient education and counseling.

[4]  Richetelle Al.  Healthnet: Connecticut Consumer Health Information Network. , 1990 .

[5]  H. Pomerance,et al.  Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics. , 1997, Archives of pediatrics & adolescent medicine.

[6]  M A Graber,et al.  Readability levels of patient education material on the World Wide Web. , 1999, The Journal of family practice.

[7]  R. Gibbs,et al.  Patient understanding of commonly used medical vocabulary. , 1987, The Journal of family practice.

[8]  S. Murray.  Consumer health information service , 2004 .

[9]  Karen Cassidy,et al.  The Merck Manual of Geriatrics (3rd. Ed.) , 2002 .

[10]  T. Davis,et al.  The gap between patient reading comprehension and the readability of patient education materials. , 1990, The Journal of family practice.

[11]  R. Rakel,et al.  Conn's current therapy , 2006 .

[12]  Lynda M. Baker,et al.  Consumer Health Materials Recommended for Public Libraries: Too Tough to Read?. , 1996 .

[13]  Nina S. Parikh,et al.  Shame and health literacy: the unspoken connection. , 1996, Patient education and counseling.

[14]  T. Kershaw,et al.  Evaluation of Education Materials Using Orem’s Self-Care Deficit Theory , 2003, Nursing science quarterly.

[15]  H. White,et al.  Informed consent during the clinical emergency of acute myocardial infarction (HER0-2 consent substudy): a prospective observational study , 2003, The Lancet.

[16]  Hal B. Jenson,et al.  Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics , 1965 .

[17]  V. Devita,et al.  Cancer : Principles and Practice of Oncology , 1982 .

[18]  J. Dollahite,et al.  Readability of printed sources of diet and health information. , 1996, Patient education and counseling.

[19]  F L Wilson,et al.  An analysis of the readability and cultural sensitivity of information on the National Cancer Institute's Web site: CancerNet. , 2000, Oncology nursing forum.

[20]  N. Ellison,et al.  The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy. 17th ed. , 1999 .