The DOI matches its Crossref record; 24 of the 24 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Readability of Patient Education Materials From High-Impact Medical Journals: A 20-Year Analysis
Open accessAbstract
Comprehensive patient education is necessary for shared decision-making. While patient–provider conversations primarily drive patient education, patients also use published materials to enhance their understanding. In this investigation, we evaluated the readability of 2585 patient education materials published in high-impact medical journals from 1998 to 2018 and compared our findings to readability recommendations from national groups. For all materials, mean readability grade levels ranged from 11.2 to 13.8 by various metrics. Fifty-four (2.1%) materials met the American Medical Association recommendation of sixth grade reading level, and 215 (8.2%) met the National Institutes of Health recommendation of eighth grade level. When stratified by journal and material type, general medical education materials from Annals of Internal Medicine were the most readable ( P < .001), with 79.8% meeting the eighth grade level. Readability did not differ significantly over time. Efforts to standardize publication practice with the incorporation of readability evaluation during the review process may improve patients’ understanding of their disease processes and treatment options.
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Cites
Low Health Literacy and Health Outcomes: An Updated Systematic Review
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“The principles of shared decision-making propose that patients and physicians participate equally in medical decisions, weighing available evidence to choose optimal treatment paths that incorporate patients’ personal values and beliefs (29).”
BackgroundShared decision making — The pinnacle of patient-centered care
Barry, M. J., & Edgman-Levitan, S. (2012) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmp1109283 · Cited by 3,433 · cited 1×
“However, the shared decision-making model has more recently emerged as the preferred approach for achieving high-quality patient-centered care (27,28).”
BackgroundLiteracy and health outcomes: A systematic review of the literature
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Cited by
Mixed methods assessment of the influence of demographics on medical advice of ChatGPT
Andreadis, K., Newman, D. R., Twan, C., Shunk, A., Mann, D. M., & Stevens, E. R. (2024) · Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association · doi:10.1093/jamia/ocae086 · Cited by 20
Ugas, M., Calamia, M. A., Tan, J., Umakanthan, B., Hill, C., Tse, K., Cashell, A., Muraj, Z., Giuliani, M., & Papadakos, J. (2025) · Patient Education and Counseling · doi:10.1016/j.pec.2024.108560 · Cited by 8
Metadata
- Authors
- Rooney, M. K., Santiago, G., Perni, S., Horowitz, D. P., McCall, A. R., Einstein, A. J., Jagsi, R., & Golden, D. W.
- Venue
- Journal of Patient Experience
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2021-01-01
- Volume
- 8
- Pages
- 2374373521998847-2374373521998847
- ISSN
- 2374-3735 (ISSN-L)
- 2374-3743
- OpenAlex
- W3135672007
- Cited by
- 363
- References
- 24
- FWCI
- 39.64
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
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- The paper
- Rooney, M. K., Santiago, G., Perni, S., Horowitz, D. P., McCall, A. R., Einstein, A. J., Jagsi, R., & Golden, D. W. (2021). Readability of Patient Education Materials From High-Impact Medical Journals: A 20-Year Analysis. Journal of Patient Experience. https://doi.org/10.1177/2374373521998847
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
