Design and preliminary evaluation of a newly designed patient-friendly discharge letter - a randomized, controlled participant-blind trial

Low health literacy has been associated with poor health outcome and impaired use of healthcare services. The hospital discharge letter represents a key source of medical information for patients and can be used to address the problem of low health literacy. The aim of this project was to develop an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:BMC health services research 2021-05, Vol.21 (1), p.450-450, Article 450
Main Authors: Smolle, Christian, Schwarz, Christine Maria, Hoffmann, Magdalena, Kamolz, Lars-Peter, Sendlhofer, Gerald, Brunner, Gernot
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Care and treatment
Comparative effectiveness research
Comprehension
Electronic health records
Evaluation
Family physicians
Feedback
Health education
Health Literacy
Health services
Healthcare quality improvement
Humans
Medical care
Medical students
Methods
Patient Discharge
Patient education
Patient-centered care
Patient-centred care
Patients
Physicians
Quality control
Quality improvement
Quality management
Questionnaires
Statistical analysis
Surveys
Surveys and Questionnaires
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Summary:Low health literacy has been associated with poor health outcome and impaired use of healthcare services. The hospital discharge letter represents a key source of medical information for patients and can be used to address the problem of low health literacy. The aim of this project was to develop and evaluate a new, patient-directed, version of the discharge letter. Based upon two conventional discharge letters (CDL; one surgical and one medical letter), two new, patient-friendly discharge letters (PFDL) were designed following 5 key principles: short sentences, few abbreviations, large font size, avoidance of technical terms and no more than 4 pages length. Medical undergraduates were randomized into two blinded groups (CDL, PFDL) and asked to assess the assigned letter for the 3 domains structure, content and patient-friendliness. Subsections were rated on a 6-point Likert scale (1 = completely agree, 6 = completely disagree), the results of the survey were compared using the Mann-Whitney-U-Test with a p 
ISSN:1472-6963
1472-6963
DOI:10.1186/s12913-021-06468-3