An Evaluation of Websites Offering Caregiver Education for Tracheostomy and Home Mechanical Ventilation

Abstract

Background: Parental and familial caregivers of a child with a tracheostomy, and possibly home mechanical ventilation (HMV), face the overwhelming task of learning to medically care for their child prior to discharge. Caregivers may cope by seeking health information on the Internet. This is concerning because information found during an Internet search may not be accurate, comprehensive, or up to date. The purpose of this project was to evaluate the quality and content of websites offering information about tracheostomies and HMV using a valid assessment tool. Methods: A total of 46 websites were identified for evaluation using the DISCERN instrument for quality and reliability, and the Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) and Flesh-Kincaid (FK) grade level instruments for readability. Accuracy of content was determined by expert opinion. Findings: Few of the websites met the recommended quality and/or readability levels. The websites recommended had a range of DISCERN scores 21-40, adjusted FRE 61-89.1, and adjusted FK 3.4-6.9. Many of the highest quality websites had a readability level at high school or college levels. Discussion: The quality and readability of websites offering caregiver education for tracheostomy and HMV are not at a level suitable for caregivers. There was often a mismatch between DISCERN quality and readability. Many high-quality websites would not be easily read and understood by the general lay population. Application to practice: DISCERN alone is not sufficient to determine whether a website should be recommended. One should consider reliability, quality, and readability when developing patient education materials, including those on the Internet.

Assessment of the Readability of the Online Patient Education Materials of Intensive and Critical Care Societies

“…The literature has no data on the readability of online PEMs for acute respiratory distress syndrome. Only one study evaluated online PEMs related to mechanical ventilation (23). This study examined 46 websites related to tracheostomy and mechanical ventilation at home.…”

An evaluation of the quality of COVID‐19 websites in terms of HON principles and using DISCERN tool

“…This tool is the first standardised quality index of consumer health information that can be used by producers, health professionals and patients to appraise written information on the available treatment choices. There are different studies in which the DISCERN tool has been used to assess many health‐related websites (Alpaydın et al, 2021 ; Li et al, 2021 ; Misra et al, 2021 ; Portillo et al, 2021 ; Venosa et al, 2021 ). In the assessment phase, four authors (SR, SS, MT and MG) analysed and evaluated the websites independently, and then they extracted the rate of each component.…”

“…The web is not responsible for its content, so controlling its information in this regard is not possible; hence, the growth of websites does not guarantee their information quality (Clarke et al, 2016 ; Gürtin & Tiemann, 2021 ). Some of the information available on the websites is not only useless, but may also be inaccurate or misleading (Chen et al, 2018 ; Misra et al, 2021 ). Trusting online health information has lately been a matter of great importance due to insufficiencies in people's ability to judge the quality of this information (Seven et al, 2021 ).…”

Evaluating the understandability and actionability of online educational videos on pre‐dialysis chronic kidney disease

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