Literacy in the health care system: a study on open heart surgery patients.

Purpose: To determine if patients recovering from open heart surgery were able to read and understand written discharge instructions and further to analyze the level of difficulty of standard discharge instructions and consent forms for open heart surgery.

Data Sources: After screening for visual acuity and efficiency, literacy was assessed with the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine test (REALM) and comprehension was tested by a post-test of five questions based on the discharge instructions. Flesch-Kincaid scores were calculated on four sets of standard written discharge instructions and consent forms.