Guides
Security on Campus Starts with You
A-Z of alternative words
England ​
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This guide gives hunreds of plain english alternatives to the 'pompous words and phrases that litter official writing'.
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Search tags: Plain english,
Best practice guidance on patient information leaflets
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Sets out components and requirements of user testing medicines patient information leaflets.
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Search tags: Plain english,
Community Health and Learning Foundation
UK
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The UK’s leading Health Literacy organisation, working to create a more Health Literate Health and Social Care system.
PROVIDES ACCESS TO HEALTH LITERACY TRAINING AND CONFERENCES
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DIY Health
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The DIY Health project provides a useful framework for delivering important health messages, emphasising the collaboration between health professionals, learning specialists and local people. This is of particular relevance when supporting parents to manage minor ailments in children under the age of 5 appropriately.
The sessions are based on a 12 week curriculum co-designed by parents and the facilitation team. The core curriculum covers fever, gastroenteritis, colds and flu, feeding and eczema (continually negotiated).
Working with families to design interventions that are developed with and for them is key to their success. The DIY project is underpinned by this co-productive approach and gives parents a stake in their healthcare environment, in line with self-care approaches.
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How to write in plain english
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This guide covers the basics of how to write more clearly with examples and a glossary of words to avoid.
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Search tags: Plain english
How to write medical information in plain english
This guide gives applies the plain English approach to medical information. It includes examples and a glossary. It also covers design and layout.
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Search tags: Plain english
NHS Brand Guidelines
Resources and templates to support the creation of patient information. Includes guidance on written information, layout, planning and communication with different groups, and signposting to further sources of information
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NHS Education for Scotland Health Literacy Leaflet
Leaflet for Health and Social Care staff raising awareness of health literacy, why it is important, what is being asked of staff and the support available.
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Producing good medicines information
Written by Theo Raynor and David Dickinson, this ‘Quick Guide’ is based on a paper published in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy in 2009. It covers four key areas of producing good medicines information (‘words’, ‘type’, ‘lines’, ‘layout’) with a list of 10 ground rules.
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Search tags: Medication
Put a LID on it
A guidance document created by NHS Lothian asking staff to pay attention to the language they use, the information they present and the design of text and graphics.
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Readability
This guide covers design and layout, areas such as the use of white space, appropriate font choice and sentence length. It also contains a readability test that aims to help determine how accessible text is to a disadvantaged reader.
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Search tags: Readability
Skilled for Health
A set of comprehensive Health Literacy learning resources which embed language, literacy and numeracy skills learning into health topics. ​
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The health literacy environment of hospitals and health centers (US)
This guide and the review tools found within it offer an approach for analysing literacy?related barriers to healthcare access and navigation. It was designed to assist chief executive officers, presidents, program directors, administrators, and healthcare workers at hospitals or health centers to consider the health literacy environment of their healthcare facilities and to analyse ways toreduce demands, to better serve their patients and staff.
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