Abstract
Patient letters are a powerful tool that genetic counselors use to communicate with their patients. Patient letters are often sent to provide information on a new diagnosis, reiterate test results, and to serve as a permanent record of the visit. Patient letters, however, are only helpful if the patients can understand them. More than 50 % of the US population reads below a 9th grade reading level and over one-third of the population has low health literacy skills. In this study we evaluate the readability of genetic counseling patient letters by assessing reading level, image use, and terminology use. One hundred forty-nine genetic counselors participated in the survey and of these, 79 submitted a sample patient letter. Analyses of the letters revealed a mean reading level of 10.93. On average, 6 genetic terms were included in each letter, and only 25 % of these terms were defined. Analyses of survey responses revealed over 75 % of the genetic counselors did not include images in their patient letters. These results indicate there is room for improvement in order to make genetic counseling patient letters more accessible to the general population.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the genetic counselors that participated in the study.
Conflict of Interest
Emily Brown, Megan Skinner, Stephanie Ashley, Kate Reed, and Shannan DeLany Dixon declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Human Studies and Informed Consent Statement
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all participants for being included in the study.
Animal Studies
This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.
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Brown, E., Skinner, M., Ashley, S. et al. Assessment of the Readability of Genetic Counseling Patient Letters. J Genet Counsel 25, 454–460 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10897-015-9890-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10897-015-9890-0