Improving readability of patient education materials.

Functional illiteracy contributes to negative long-term health consequences for patients who must understand and adhere to complex health care instructions and, therefore, is of primary importance to community health nurses. This problem is compounded when English is the patient's second language. A process for improving patient education materials (PEMs) through adaptation or creation of new materials to meet the health needs of diverse groups is presented. The process was applied to a popular health education program used with school-age children and their parents to teach them home management of asthma. Target parents were known to read at a 5th-grade level, and English was a second language for many of them. Therefore, extensive revision of the existing PEMs was required. The steps to successful revision included assessing readability and comprehensibility, editing the materials, and evaluating the new PEMs to determine the effectiveness of the revision measures.