Medical Literature

Some smart folks have gone out and done some research on all the fancy hand-outs that doctors, clinics, hospitals, school nurses, and the medical community continually hand out to people.  There's some general consensus, which got published in the JAMA Internal Medicine publication this month (thanks to Fox News for the note).

They've all come to realize what most of us have said for the last twenty years....the commentary in the hand-outs....is too complicated for the average American to grasp.

You have a number of medical experts, who have six to eight years of college, who sit and write these publications.  It's nothing personal with me.....but every time you see one of these and attempt to read it....you need to stumble over various phrases and words that you aren't prepared to read.

Last year, the dentist office wanted to hand me literature on gum disease.  I ran through the hand-out and probably got about half of the message.

What the medical establishment needs to do.....is simply hire people who write around the eighth-grade level, and use simple graphics to tell a story.  Thirty percent of the people who read these hand-outs....probably understand every single word, but the rest of us?  The range goes up and down.

The sad thing here is that there is a need for medical literature, and they could write it in a way to be understood.  So far, they just haven't grasped the problem.