Readability of patient information leaflets for urological conditions and treatments

Abstract

Objective

Patient information leaflets (PILs) are commonly used to improve the understanding of conditions and treatments. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL) is a test used to evaluate the readability of a text with the score corresponding to the grade level of a student in the United States. The objective of our study was to assess the readability of PILs produced by the British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS), patient.co.uk and the American Urological Association (AUA).

Methods

All PILs from the BAUS and AUA websites and urology-related PILs on the patient.co.uk site were assessed. PILs were individually analysed to derive the word count, number of characters per word and the FKGL (readability score). The mean values from each source were compared.

Results

Patient.co.uk PILs were significantly the most readable on average with an FKGL of 8.09 (p value < 0.0001). The mean FKGL of PILs by BAUS was 11.61, which was insignificantly lower than that of AUA (mean 11.94; p value 0.059). Overall, only 54 (16.4%) of all 330 PILs had an FKGL less than 10, the readability level for a 15-year-old.

Conclusions

Although PILs produced by these large organisations may be easily readable by well-educated adults, comprehension may be difficult for a significant proportion of the United Kingdom adult population.