(P04-011-23) Information Comprehension Analytics of Patient Education Resources on Hospital Nutrition Diets

Objectives: Therapeutic nutrition plays an imperative role during a patient’s hospital course. There is a tremendous body of literature that emphasizes the systematic delivery of information regarding hospital nutrition diets. A major component of delivering healthcare information is the principle of providing quality healthcare information, but this has not yet been investigated on hospital nutrition diets. This study aimed to evaluate the comprehension and readability of patient education materials regarding therapeutic hospital diets.

Methods: This cross-sectional study utilized frequently asked questions from the Google RankBrain Algorithm and each associated educational article. After questions and articles were extracted, two independent raters evaluated questions for Rothwell’s Classification of Questions and JAMA Benchmark Criteria. Raters also utilized 9 readability scales (i.e., Flesh Reading Ease) and Brief DISCERN (cut-off ≥ 16) for each associated educational article.

Results: A total of 13 hospital diet categories were included in this study. This resulted in 260 frequently asked questions and educational articles extracted using the RankBrain Algorithm. Rothwell’s Classification revealed 82.7% of questions were classified as “Fact” (n= 215), followed by “Value” (n= 23), and “Policy” (n= 22). Patient education materials that met grade-reading level recommendations (Flesh Reading Ease ≥ 60) were found in 23.1% of diets (n= 3): low-fat, pureed, and soft diets. Brief DISCERN scores were found to be statistically significantly associated with Flesh Reading Ease when scores met grade-reading level recommendations (p = 0.04).

Conclusions: This is the first study on hospital nutrition diets that evaluated both the information readability of patient education materials using the most frequently asked questions associated with each diet. The findings of this study indicate that patient education materials on a majority of hospital nutrition diets do not meet grade-reading level recommendations. A lack of appropriate readable materials may also contribute to a knowledge paucity given the high frequency of “Fact” questions generated by the RankBrain algorithm. These results encourage healthcare providers and educators to integrate techniques that improve healthcare literacy regarding these diets.

Funding Sources: None