Investigating the Syntactic Structures of Patient Information Leaflets

Abstract

The majority of the Malaysian people consider the Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) of their medications difficult to read and understand because of their linguistic complexity. Clear and comprehensive PILs will help the users/readers gain the benefits of these PILs. Poor and complex PILs will cause lack of adherence to the medications being used. The current study aims first, to investigate the use of command, passive voice and negation currently used in the Malaysian PILs, their frequent occurrence and their effect on readers’ comprehension. A total of 10 leaflets of the most common disease in Malaysia, which is diabetes, were tested. The analysis was done first, by applying statistical descriptive analysis to show the frequency and percentage of each syntactic structures. Second, a comprehension questionnaire was carried out with 210 participants to evaluate the reading comprehension of the users/readers based on two texts. The original text which consists of sentences taken from the PILs and the revised text, which consists of the revised sentences of the original ones. Based on the results, command scored the highest mean value than passive and negation. Additionally, the results of conducting the comprehension questionnaire showed that most of the participants chose the revised text for command, passive and negation, respectively. These results revealed that most of the participants consider the revised text easier to read and understand than the original text. In conclusion, the linguistic complexity of the PILs will prevent users/readers from utilizing the benefits of the medical information provided by these PILs.