Trial reportJournal of general internal medicine2012
Readability of patient education materials available at the point of care.
Trial report in Journal of general internal medicine, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 97 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
97 citing papers in PubMed.
- Improving Diabetes Health Literacy by Animation.The Diabetes educator · 2014Trial
- Co-Creation and Usability Testing of a Digital Cardiac Rehabilitation Program (eCardiacRehab): Design and Development Study.JMIR cardio · 2026Article
- Supporting patient understanding of cervical and ovarian cancer: how well does AI perform?Proceedings (Baylor University. Medical Center) · 2026Article
- Evaluating Readability and Understandability of Patient-Reported Questionnaires for Bladder Pain Syndrome.International urogynecology journal · 2026Article
- Readability of patient information leaflets for commonly used medicines in the UK, Germany and Türkiye: a cross-sectional document analysis.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Physician Perspectives on ChatGPT-4o as a Patient Resource for Abdominal Cancer Surgeries: Cross-Sectional Survey.JMIR perioperative medicine · 2026Article
- Article
- Assessment of Factors Associated with Health Literacy Among Afghan Refugees in Pakistan.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Large language models versus expert clinicians in optimizing Chinese patient education materials for temporomandibular disorders: a mixed-methods study integrating readability, accuracy, actionability, and cultural adaptability.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Readability of dermatology patient education materials: a comparative analysis of Turkish Dermatology Association brochures and texts generated by ChatGPT and Gemini.Turkish journal of medical sciences · 2026Article
- Enhancing patient participation in emergency department through patient-friendly clinical notes generated by large language models.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Evaluating the Readability of AI-Generated Patient Information on Chronic Diseases.Chronic diseases and translational medicine · 2025Article
- Chatbot To Help Patients Understand Their Health.Proceedings of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing. Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing · 2025Article
- An Evaluation of Online Resources for Paediatric Tube Feeding in Aotearoa New Zealand: A Document Analysis.Journal of human nutrition and dietetics : the official journal of the British Dietetic Association · 2025Article
- Enhancing the Readability of Online Patient Education Materials Using Large Language Models: Cross-Sectional Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Large Language Models: Pioneering New Educational Frontiers in Childhood Myopia.Ophthalmology and therapy · 2025Article
- Use of digital flashcards for reproductive health counseling among adolescents.PEC innovation · 2025Article
- Assessing artificial intelligence-generated patient discharge information for the emergency department: a pilot study.International journal of emergency medicine · 2025Article
- A Scoping Review of Graphic Medicine Interventions to Promote Changes in Health Behavior, Health Service Engagement, and Health Outcomes.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Readability is responsibility: ensuring firearm safety educational materials are on target.Trauma surgery & acute care open · 2025Article
37 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMany 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 8(th) grade level. Currently, electronic health record (EHR) providers partner with companies that produce PEMs, allowing clinicians to access PEMs at the point of care.
objectiveTo assess the readability of PEMs provided by a popular EHR vendor as well as the National Library of Medicine (NLM).
designWe 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. MEASUREMENTS: 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.
resultsWe 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 8(th) 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.
conclusionsThe 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.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.