To understand or not to understand: This is the problem

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Health Literacy
• Gastroenterology

Background:

• Informed consent is crucial for colonoscopy procedures, especially within cancer screening programs.
• Evaluating the readability of informed consent forms is essential for patient comprehension.
• Previous studies have not adequately assessed colonoscopy informed consent readability in Turkish university hospitals.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the readability of informed consent forms used before colonoscopy.
• To compare different readability assessment methods for informed consent.
• To identify sociodemographic factors influencing informed consent comprehension.

Main Methods:

• A descriptive, cross-sectional study involving 211 adult participants.
• Utilized three readability assessment tools: Cloze Readability Procedure, Flesch's formula (Atesman adaptation), and Cetinkaya-Uzun formula.
• Collected sociodemographic data from participants.

Main Results:

• Readability scores indicated 'average' to 'frustration' levels of difficulty across methods.
• The informed consent was deemed suitable for individuals with a 10th-grade education level or higher.
• Higher readability scores were associated with higher education, frequent media consumption, and prior colonoscopy information.

Conclusions:

• The current informed consent form for colonoscopy presents significant readability challenges for a portion of the patient population.
• Patients with lower reading abilities may struggle to understand the provided information.
• The Cloze Test Procedure may be a valuable tool for identifying and improving problematic consent forms.