Readability f Online Hand Surgery Patient Educational Materials: Evaluating the Trend Since 2008

Purpose Online patient educational materials have historically been written at a higher-than-recommended sixth grade reading level. The objectives of this study were to assess the readability of online hand surgery patient educational materials from the official online patient resource website of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand (ASSH) and to compare changes in the readability of the current ASSH online patient educational materials with those in 2008 and 2015. Methods An internet-based study of all 88 English language patient educational materials on HandCare.org the official online patient resource website of the ASSH, was performed. The readability of each article was assessed using the Flesch reading ease formula, Flesch-Kincaid grade level, Coleman-Liau index, Gunning-Fog index, and Simple Measure of Gobbledygook grade level. To evaluate the trend in the readability of ASSH online hand surgery patient educational materials, the Flesch-Kincaid grade levels of articles published in 2020 were compared with those of data published in 2008 and 2015. Results The average Flesch reading ease score of the patient educational materials was 57.6, which is at the high-school reading level. The average reading grade level of patient educational materials ranged from 9.0 to 12.3 depending on the readability metric used. The average Flesch-Kincaid grade level of all the ASSH patient educational materials was 9.8 in 2020, which is significantly better than 10.4 in 2008 but significantly worse than 8.5 in 2015. Conclusion Online hand surgery patient educational materials continue to be written for the general public at a higher-than-recommended reading grade level. There has been no substantial improvement in the readability of online hand surgery patient educational materials since 2008. Copyright (C) 2022 by the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The readability of online hand surgery patient educational materials remains higher than recommended, and there has been no substantial improvement since 2008.