The Readability and Comprehensibility of Patient Information Leaflets for Over-the-counter Drugs for Some Common Illnesses

Abstract

ABSTRACT Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) are key communication tools in healthcare delivery. Even though readable PILs can enhance effective communication between pharmaceutical companies and the patients who use their products, there are limited number of studies on the readability and comprehensibility of PILs in Ghana. This study investigated the readability and comprehensibility of PILs of over-the-counter drugs for seven common illnesses in Ghana. Using non-experimental descriptive design, the researcher conveniently selected 68 PILs and measured their readability using SMOG and Flesch Kincaid Grade Level readability metrices. The researcher measured the lexical density and syntactic complexity of the selected leaflets using Coh-Metrix. From the scores of the readability formulae, the researcher discovered that the PILs were difficult to read and readers required at least fourteen years of formal education in order to find the leaflets comprehensible. Also, the lexical density and syntactic complexity of the selected leaflets were beyond average, suggesting that readers would have difficulty reading and understanding the leaflets. Moreover, there were no statistically significant differences among the PILS in terms of lexical density and syntactic complexity, suggesting that all the leaflets were of similar difficulty. Also, the researcher discovered through an interview with twenty consumers of these over-the-counter drugs that they found the leaflets difficult to read due to the unfamiliar words used in the leaflets. There is the need for information leaflets to be written at an easy-to-read level so that users of the leaflets can read and understand them