EVALUATING THE READABILITY OF THE PUBLICLY AVAILABLE INFORMATION RELATED TO ARDS

SESSION TITLE: Education, Research, and Quality Improvement Posters 2 SESSION TYPE: Original Investigation Posters PRESENTED ON: 10/10/2023 12:00 pm - 12:45 pm PURPOSE: As seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, ARDS is a prominent cause of intensive care unit (ICU) admissions and the need for mechanical ventilation.5 Of patients with COVID-19, 6-10% required mechanical ventilation due to ARDS which was further associated with a mortality rate of 25-50%.2 Due to increased public awareness of this syndrome during the pandemic and the fact that a significant proportion of American adults look online for health information (61% per the Pew Research Center)1, we sought to evaluate the accessibility of currently available informational material in terms of readability. The AMA recommends that healthcare materials be written at the sixth-grade reading level to allow appropriate reach to the public.4 METHODS: We searched for “ARDS” using a Virtual Private Network (VPN)-enabled google search (to avoid influencing search results due to an IP address’s previous search history). The top 20 websites were then explored including the landing page and the first generation of sub-pages. To assess the “readability” of a website, we evaluated each included webpage using the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score (FRE), the Gunning-Fog Index (GFI), and the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) readability formula, amongst others.4 (3) We further evaluated components of the prose including paragraph count, word count, letter count, syllable count, and composites of these individual metrics. We used Readable (Added Bytes Ltd.) to acquire these metrics of readability.3 RESULTS: The mean FRE score for the included webpages was 41.3 which correlates to a college or “difficult to read” reading level. The mode for FRE was 52.7 which correlates to the 10th-12th grade reading level. The mean and mode GFI were 11.13 and 8.2, correlating with high school junior reading level and eighth grade, respectively. Most websites scored 8+ on the IELTS formula, correlating with the fact that were the pages written by a non-native English speaker, the speaker would be rated “a very good user” of the language, with 9 being the highest score. To provide granular context on the complexity of the written pages, the mean paragraph count was 8, words per paragraph 34.6, sentences per paragraph 2.13, words per sentence 14.89, and syllables per word 1.78. The average reading time per page was 1 minute and 50 seconds. CONCLUSIONS: When evaluating the top publicly available webpages regarding the readability of information on ARDS, we found that the webpages were difficult to read and well above the AMA-recommended sixth-grade reading level. Despite the attention on the syndrome over the past three years of the pandemic, these public resources are not accessible for a large proportion of the American population. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: The next step in our ongoing research is the better identify what factors drive the readability of these webpages to better inform the creation of future material by healthcare organizations and institutions. DISCLOSURES: No relevant relationships by Nayab Ahmed No relevant relationships by Vidisha Desai No relevant relationships by Harvir Gambhir No relevant relationships by Viren Kaul No relevant relationships by Gabriella Primera