One of the key activities of a patient organisation is to develop content and information materials that are understandable and accessible, usually to a lay audience, but also targeted towards other players in the healthcare system. This presentation explains the basic principles of developing sound, evidence-based content, stylistic tips, and the key differences between generating content for print, online and video media.
Presentation at the WECAN Academy 2019:
How to develop good content and patient materials – print, online and video
Or “Seeing through the SMOG”
Presenter: Judith Taylor, Thyroid Cancer Alliance
The following presentation held at the WECAN Academy 2019 will help you to understand:
- WHAT do we want to know and WHY?
- The patient information toolkit
- Breakout sessions:
- developing a template: what questions do we need to answer?
- best practice and characteristics of good patient information
- Can we trust it? Building a reputation for reliable material
- Six pillars of content production quality
- Tips for managing layout, content, and video
- Some examples of print and video content
- “Seeing through the SMOG” – SMOG and Flesch readability tools
Further reading
- The Information Standard (UK): https://www.england.nhs.uk/tis/about/the info standard/
- BMA Patient Information Awards: https://www.bma.org.uk/library/patient-information-awards
- Macmillan Cancer Support: How we produce our information https://www.macmillan.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/how-we-work/award-winning-cancer-information/how-we-produce-our-information.html
- Cancer Research UK: Checklist for information production and review: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/about-our-information/checklist-writing-review
- A Z of NHS health writing: https://beta.nhs.uk/service-manual/content/a-to-z-of-NHS-health-writing
- MedlinePlus: How to write “Easy-To-Read” materials https://medlineplus.gov/etr.html
Tools
- Grammarly https://www.grammarly.com
- Readability test tool https://www.webfx.com/tools/read-able/
- Readability test tools for French, Italian and Spanish texts
- https://visual-seo.com/SEO-Software-Features/Readability-Analysis