engleski

Quality of patient information on the internet: readability scores

Patient information posted on the Internet has become a popular mode of communication with the population at large. With more than 35% of patients searching the Internet for health and medical information worldwide, that makes the quality of patient information on the Internet a critical issue. Readability could be seen as the first prerequisite in understanding written materials. Many studies on readability have shown that patient information is frequently written at the reading level too high for the average population to understand. The aim of this study was to determine the reading level of patient information found on the Croatian web sites and written in Croatian language. The topic of diabetes was selected as very frequent in patient education materials. Patient information on diabetes from 10 Croatian web sites was tested for readability using the SMOG formula. The readability scores of the tested materials ranged from 11 to 15, which showed that these materials would not be understood by at least 80% of the Croatian adult population. Educational attainment data from 1991 and 2001 Censuses are compared, showing slight differences, but the results still showed that 60% of the tested materials would be understood by only 10% of the adult Croatian population.

patient information; readability; internet

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