[Reading ability of family physicians]

To measure the abilities of comprehension and interpretation of medical texts by first-level physicians, and to explore their association with length of clinical experience.

An instrument of two texts (sociomedical and ethical areas) with 40 items related to comprehension and 40 to interpretation was used. Its construct and content were validated by 10 experts and achieved a consistency of 0.99 (Kuder-Richardson). It was used in 104 physicians selected at random from the 408 working in eight first-level clinics of the Mexican social security system in Mexico City. The Mann-Whitney test was used to evaluate differences between two groups, and the Kruskal-Wallis test for more than two groups.

Higher scores were seen for comprehension over interpretation globally (p < 0.0001) and when partitioned by postgraduate studies (higher if yes, p 0.01), years of experience (lower if > 20, p 0.02), and gender (higher in women, p 0.03), but no differences were seen by clinic. Differences in interpretation were not observed.

Interpretation was less developed and did not change with experience. There appeared to be a problem of a deteriorating capacity of comprehension with experience.