Don't make bad news worse

Early definitions of 'health literacy' focused on the reader's ability to understand and use health information - as we discussed back in June. Recent work brings the health practitioner who writes or gives the health information into the definition.

Later, I'm going to blog about the financial cost to the country of poor health literacy, but let Elspeth Murray tell you about the human cost of badly-presented health information. As Elspeth's poem 'This is bad enough' reminds us, when you get bad news about your health, you want health information that cares about you. It should be clear, relevant, up to date, and make the reader feel it's written for them.

Go to our website for links to more blogs about health literacy

Read about our workshop Writing Health Information Clearly