Readability and Comprehensibility of Patient Information Leaflets for Antidiabetic Medications in Qatar.

The readability and comprehensibility of the patient information leaflets (PILs) provided with antidiabetic medications are of questionable standards; this issue negatively affects adherence to drug therapy, especially in patients with limited literacy skills. To evaluate the readability and comprehensibility of PILs supplied with medications used for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus in Qatar. All PILs of the antidiabetic medications in Qatar were evaluated using the Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) score for readability. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning-Fog Index, and SMOG Grading were used to estimate the comprehensibility of PILs in terms of school grade levels. A total of 45 PILs were evaluated: 32 (71.1%) PILs of brand-name products and 13 (28.9%) for generics. Nine (20%) of the PILs were in English only; 8 (17.8%) were in English, Arabic, and French; and 28 (62.2%) were in English and Arabic. The mean FRE score was 37.71 (±15.85), and the most readable PIL had FRE score of 62. The mean scores for the comprehensibility evaluations were 10.96 (±2.67), 15.02 (±2.52), and 11.41 (±1.6) for the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning-Fog Index, and SMOG Grading, respectively. The most commonly used antidiabetic medication was metformin with 1372.9 (±552.9) as PILs' mean number of words. Only 2.2% of PILs had acceptable readability scores. All PILs could be comprehended by at least an 11th grade student, which exceeds the recommended grade level for health-related materials. Approximately 20% of these PILs were in English only and were not readable by most patients.