THE COMPREHENSIBILITY OF AUSTRALIAN EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE FOR PATIENTS WITH ASTHMA

Background: Education of patients with asthma is aimed at improving th eir knowledge, skills and attitudes, and thus compliance and control. Patient information pamphlets play a role in education, medication inf ormation and informed consent processes, and must be understood. We as sessed the comprehensibility of Australian pamphlets on asthma. Method : 50 Australian pamphlets on asthma (written in English for adults) we re selected from the Asthma Foundation, a teaching hospital in South A ustralia, the pharmaceutical industry, the National Asthma Campaign an d specialist books and journal articles. The Australian Rix readabilit y formula was used to estimate the grade of reading difficulty, and th us comprehensibility, of these patient information pamphlets (grade 1 = most comprehensible; grade 12 = most difficult). Results: The mean g rade of reading difficulty of the 50 patient information pamphlets was 8 (SD, 1.4; range, 6-11). One-third were written at or above grade 9 and two-thirds were at or above grade 8. Conclusion: As recent educati onal attainment data suggest that up to 52% of 15-69-year-olds in Aust ralia comprehend text at or below grade 7, a substantial number of pam phlets on asthma are beyond the reading and comprehension abilities of many of their target population.