Catie Holdridge
Writing messages that are effective for all your readers is not as easy as it may first seem. New research shows that patients may be risking their health because warning labels on medications are not clear enough.
The researchers, led by Professor Theo Raynor at the University of Leeds, found that phrases like ‘may cause drowsiness’ weren’t fully understood. After testing such typical phrases on their 200 volunteers, they concluded that many of them were too vague to be effective.
An instruction such as ‘avoid alcohol’ probably seemed unambiguous to the person who wrote it. But the scientists found that many patients thought this meant merely ‘reduce alcohol’. After presenting the participants with rewritten alternatives, the team deemed that only the very specific ‘do not drink alcohol while taking this medicine’ left no room for misinterpretation.
The results feature in a report published in the British National Formulary, which advises doctors, nurses and pharmacists. This could mean there will soon be increased clarity where it is obviously sorely needed. And perhaps that we should all re-examine our own writing to ensure the message we write has the best chance of being the message our readers receive.
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