HSC Education Days
Document Type
Poster
Publication Date
9-28-2018
Abstract
The Painless Push (www.thepainlesspush.com) was created to provide patients up-to-date, scientifically accurate information about pain relief options for labor and delivery. Estimates report that 46% of New Mexico’s population is functionally illiterate. These individuals may fail to identify a sales receipt total or information in an article, which makes providing patient educational material (PEM) challenging. 28.7% of the population reports Spanish as their primary language. Our goal was to provide scientifically accurate information in English and Spanish that serves limited-literacy individuals. Previous recommendations suggest PEM be written at a 6th grade level, but readability scores can be inflated by medical terminology. For example, “anesthesiologist” rates at 49, “epidural anesthesia” a 28, and “pain medicine” a 13. When analyzed with validated screening tools, www.thepainlesspush.com rated at a 10-12th grade level. Thus, narrations at a 6th grade level were added. We designed the website based on research reporting how patients of different literacy levels read and digest web-based PEM. This includes meaningful headers, bullet points, blank space, and limiting paragraph size. The entire website, including text and audio, is available in Spanish. In conclusion, we developed an engaging, interactive online PEM website in English and Spanish to provide evidenced based information tailored to our population.
Recommended Citation
Faber, Lauren; Kylee Greider; and Katherine M. Seligman. "Thepainlesspush.com: Development of a bilingual patient education website about pain relief options in labor." (2018). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/hsc_ed_day/8
Comments
This poster was presented during the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center Education Day, 2018.