The Informed Patient, a Wall Street Journal column by Laura Llandro, explains why patients don’t understand what care-givers just explained to them. The words often are incomprehensible.

The Centers for Disease Control has said, this column reports, even the “most sophisticated patient may not be smarter than a fifth grader.” There are efforts being made to simplify instructions described in the story below.

Patients cannot go home and follow through on a treatment plan they don’t understand. It is too easy, there in the doctor’s office, not to understand what you did not fully understand until you are out the door.

What Can You Do?

Always ask the doctor if you may repeat your treatment plan instructions to be sure that you understand them. If you don’t, that is the moment to catch the error.

Always read about your diagnosis on trustworthy medical websites.

Two of our favorites include the Mayo Clinic’s excellent website, which has a patient-friendly format and Medline Plus, the consumer website sponsored by the National Library of Medicine. There is an excellent medical dictionary on this site, which will help you understand terms which you don’t.

There are more excellent websites, of course. You need to find one with clear information about sponsorship of the site and citations which tell you the source of the medical research being quoted.

The Wall Street Journal

“When it comes to understanding medical information, even the most sophisticated patient may not be smarter than a fifth grader.

“Nearly nine out of 10 adults have difficulty following routine medical advice, largely because it’s often incomprehensible to average people, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. And that’s bad for health care: Confused by scientific jargon, doctors’ instructions and complex medical phrases, patients are more likely to skip necessary medical tests or fail to properly take their medications, the agency says. Studies show that poor health literacy drives up costs to the health-care system and worsens patient outcomes. (Emphasis added)

“Now, federal and state officials are pushing public-health professionals, doctors and insurers to simplify the language they use to communicate with the public in patient handouts, medical forms and health websites. More than two-thirds of state Medicaid agencies call for health material to be written at a reading level of between the fourth and sixth grades. A new federal program called the Health Literacy Action Plan (health.gov/communication/HLActionPlan) is promoting simplified language nationwide. And some health insurers, doctors’ practices and hospitals have begun using specialized software that scans documents looking for hard-to-understand words and phrases and suggests plain-English replacements. A patient-consent form warning of hyperpyrexia after a procedure, for example, might be translated to an abnormally high fever.”

Source: Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2010