Charing Cross Hospital Lung Glossary
NHS reforms encourage all hospital doctors to send to patients a copy of the letter which they are sending to the patient's GP after a consultation. Inevitably it is difficult to ensure that the writing style and content are fully understandable by all patients and sometimes there is inevitable jargon or terminology contained within these letters. Whilst receiving a copy of the letter being sent to the GP has been evaluated and shown to enhance patient satisfaction, more detailed study shows that words are not comprehensible and the reading age is often understandably higher than ideal. The Charing Cross team have therefore produced and evaluated a glossary which they send with the copy of the GP's letter to all new patients attending their department. This glossary is now available for others to use borrow and adapt as they wish.

Download the Charing Cross Hospital Lung Glossary here

Does the use of a glossary aid patient understanding of the letters sent to their general practitioner?
Brown CE, Roberts NJ, Partridge MR Clin Med 7(5) Oct 2007    Download the study here

How useful are post consultation letters to patients? 
Roberts NJ, Partridge MR BMC Med 4 2006 
Publisher URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed