A case of pancreatitis‐panniculitis‐polyarthritis syndrome due to pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor

Abstract

Approximately 80 million Americans have limited health literacy, and lower health literacy has been associated with both poorer access to care and health outcomes. 3 The American Medical Association and the National Health Institutes recommend that the readability of patient education materials be at reading grade level 6 or lower. 4 The average patient reads at grade level 7, and nearly 20% of Americans have difficulty comprehending reading grade level 4 text. [3][4][5] This indicates that currently available online resources for PV and BP are on average at least six reading grades higher than recommended and at least five grades higher than the average patient's reading ability. Remarkably, we found that resources written by medical doctors, and especially by dermatologists, had higher ARGL than those written by non-medical doctors.Limitations of our study included the cross-sectional design and possible multi-rater variability across the different validated readability measures. Additionally, using "pemphigus" and "pemphigoid" as search terms may have increased the grade level of resources. Our findings highlight the need to develop online patient education resources that are accessible to a higher proportion of patients and to actively involve content providers and patients in resource development.