Stop 4 of 7 · Weekly

Patient education handouts

Approved content in, a sixth grade handout out, with a picture list for the designer and a trail the educator can sign.

The handout the educator asked for

Rana was asked for a one page handout for families taking someone home with a nebuliser. There is already approved content for it, buried in a policy document, written at about a twelfth grade level. The plain language target most health systems write to is about sixth grade, and the person reading it has had three hours of sleep.

Claude does not write the clinical content. The organisation already approved that. Claude turns approved content into something a family can read at the worst moment of their year, and produces the trail that lets the educator approve it in one pass instead of three.

Rules for this one

• The source is the approved file, attached. Nothing new comes in. If the draft adds a fact, the fact comes out.
• Sixth grade, second person, short sentences, one idea per line.
• Every abbreviation spelled out the first time.
• No number that is not in the source. Doses, volumes, times and phone numbers are copied, never generated.
• Translation goes through the organisation's approved route, not through a chat.

The attached file is my employer's approved patient education content on [name the topic]. Rewrite it as a one page handout for a family taking someone home from a critical care unit. Sixth grade reading level, second person, short sentences, one idea per line. Spell out every abbreviation the first time it appears. Use only what is in the attached file: add nothing, and where a number, a time or a dose is not in the file, leave a blank in square brackets rather than filling it in. End with a table listing each section of the handout and the section of the source it came from.

Here is the handout draft: [paste the draft]. List four pictures that would make it easier to follow for someone who reads slowly or is frightened. For each one, describe what the picture shows in a sentence a designer can work from, say which paragraph it sits beside, and write the alt text. Nothing that would need a photograph of a real person receiving care.

Turn this into the note that goes to the clinical educator with the draft. What the source document was, which sections I used, what I changed and why, what is still blank and who has to fill it, and the three things I most want checked. Under 150 words, plain, no preamble.

The review trail

Keep it on page two of the Word file. It is what a reviewer needs to approve the thing without opening the source line by line, and it is what you will want in twelve months when somebody asks where a sentence came from.

Mark stop 4 done