#269 How readable are the ‘Patient information leaflets’ provided to carers of paediatric patients in acute care?

<h3>Introduction</h3> The delivery of safe acute care requires effective and sustained transfer of medical information. ‘Patient information leaflets (PILs)’ are ubiquitous in the clinical setting. PILs help bridge the gap, ensuring that carers and sometimes paediatric patients have a clear understanding of their treatments. This information must be considerate of the varying degrees of literacy. We assessed the readability of PILs in the Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) Department of Paediatric Emergency Medicine. <h3>Methods</h3> Four online readability tools were utilised to score 65 PILs. An average score of readability was obtained for each PIL, where a ‘readability score’ corresponds to the number of years of education required to understand the information. A ‘Flesch Reading Ease’(FRE) expresses ease of reading as a percentage, whereby higher scores indicate greater ease. A readability score of less than 6 is classified as ‘easy’ and corresponds to primary education level of reading, 6 to 10 is considered moderate and corresponds to an education level equivalent to junior certificate and greater than 10 is considered difficult corresponding to leaving certificate level education. <h3>Results</h3> 65 PILs were analysed. The mean (±SD) number of words was 20975 (±13750) with a mean of 709 (±524) sentences. The mean number of words per sentence was 9.9 (±5.5). The mean readability score was 6.99 years (±2.2 years) with a mean FRE of 69.85% (±10.4%). Of these PILs, 22 (34%) were easy, 30 (46%) were moderate and 13 (20%) were difficult. Table 1 demonstrates features of most difficult to read PILs. The PILs classified as easy demonstrated a higher lexical density and lower average number of words per sentence. <h3>Conclusions</h3> This study demonstrates a varied readability of PILs provided to the public in the CHI Department of Paediatric Emergency Department. PILS content should be informed by undergoing a readability process prior to implementation and should cater to all user’s literacy level.