Plain language summaries (PLS) are an important publication enhancement for enabling non-specialist audiences to connect with healthcare and science. In the poster ‘How readable are plain language summaries?’ presented at the 2021 European Meeting of ISMPP, Tony Ferrar & Emma Conran from Porterhouse Medical Group were interested in examining the readability of PLS of medical articles. The authors looked at PLS from four different journals and compared their readabilities to those of healthcare articles from the most commonly read online UK newspapers. Each of the journals had a different target audience for their summaries, and summaries were referred to as significance statements, author summaries, digests or PLS. Although the readability of these summaries tended to align with the target audiences the journals aim to reach, in general they were significantly harder to read than newspaper articles.
It will be interesting to see how collaborative efforts with specific audiences, including patients, will shape the way PLS are developed in the future, and whether such collaborations will help to improve the readability and accessibility of PLS and reduce misunderstanding of medical research
Tony Ferrar & Emma Conran, Porterhouse Medical Group