Assessing of the audiovisual patient educational materials on diabetes care with PEMAT

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the understandability and actionability of audiovisual educational materials on diabetes in Korea using the Patient Education Materials Evaluation Tool (PEMAT), as well as determine the usefulness of these materials.

A total of 85 audiovisual materials were collected from Korean websites of territory general hospitals, national health institutions, research associations, and major search engines relating to diabetes that were created between 2006 and 2015. Of these, 34 materials that met the inclusion and exclusion criteria were analyzed. Five trained researchers evaluated the materials independently.

More than half of the materials (58.8%) had been created by nongovernment organizations. Slightly more than half (n = 19) of the audiovisual materials were streaming-style animation. The average PEMAT score (58.5%) for these materials was moderate. Compared to "understandability" ratings (49.5%), "actionability" ratings were low (31.4%); indeed, fourteen materials had an actionability of 0%. The average usefulness score of the materials was 4.3 points out of a possible 7. There were few suitable audiovisual materials for patient education on diabetes.

These findings will be useful for developing new audiovisual educational materials for diabetes patients with high understandability, actionability, and usefulness.