Table 5.

How do we get there?

1. Increase awareness of the issue of readability and how to enhance readability of patient education materials among orthopaedic surgeons

a. Through CME’s, Instructional Course lectures and Workshops

b. Inclusion in residency/medical school curriculum

2. Creation of easily readable patient education materials

a. AAOS and subspecialty organizations should lead the effort through collaboration

b. Patient education materials should clearly identify the readability level at which it is prepared for.

3. Feedback from patients

a. Direct testing of patient education material on patients for comprehension.

b. Online patient education materials should have a brief “post-test” survey to obtain feedback from patients directly related to that material’s ease of readability and comprehension.

4. Accessibility of patient education materials

a. AAOS and subspeciality organizations should further enhance their efforts to make available all patient education material though Internet

b. Avoid fragmentation and make available all patient education material in one location preferably “Your Orthopaedic Connection” website (http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/) instead of different subspecialty websites.

c. Websites should make available “printer-friendly” versions of patient education materials

5. Promote further research into

a. Reading skills of orthopaedic patient population

b. Impact of improving readability of orthopaedic patient education materials.

c. Reading skills of Internet users

d. Creation of better standards and tools for measuring comprehensibility and appropriateness of multimedia rich patient education materials for patients with limited literacy skills.