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Fewer syllables, better patient education

Part of putting the patient at the center of their medical care (aka the patient-centered medical home) is making sure patients understand how to stay or get well, or how to manage their condition so it

Fewer syllables, better patient education

Part of putting the patient at the center of their medical care (aka the patient-centered medical home) is making sure patients understand how to stay or get well, or how to manage their condition so it doesn't get seriously worse in a short period of time.

You'd think it'd be obvious to focus on the patient, the reason the medical-industrial complex exists. Plenty of money is being spent ($26 million in greater Rochester alone from a Medicare grant) to make sure health care providers remember why they exist.

In order to get or keep a patient well or at the least maintain the current state, patients have to be educated about their health. To accomplish that, the material you get from a doctor shouldn't read like War and Peace, and your conversations shouldn't sound like the audiobook version.

The Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research has put out a guide to help health care professionals get their message across to you, the patient. As someone who writes about the often-confusing world of health, I applaud the instructions to use words such as runny nose instead of excess mucus, pain killer instead of analgesic, make worse instead of exacerbate and feverish instead of febrile. I agree that you shouldn't use a medical term to define another medical term. Jargon should be avoided upon pain of a terminal outcome (death).

I wish the authors had taken their own advice. The Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool is defined as "a systematic method to evaluate and compare the understandability and actionability (emphasis theirs, but why would anyone want to own those words?) of patient education materials. The following are our definitions of understandability and actionability:

Understandability: Patient education materials are understandable when consumers of diverse backgrounds and varying levels of health literacy can process and explain key messages.

Actionability: Patient education materials are actionable when consumers of diverse backgrounds and varying levels of health literacy can identify what they can do based on the information presented."

Seriously, those people must have been paid by the syllable.

How about this: The tool is a way to give people a clear message that leads to action.