Date
8-6-2025
Department
School of Health Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Health Sciences (PhD)
Chair
Ola Martin
Keywords
readability, internal communication, patient safety, safety culture, newsletter, policies, procedures
Disciplines
Medicine and Health Sciences
Recommended Citation
Kinsey, Trevor M., "Building Culture and Enhancing Patient Safety: A Readability Analysis of Internal Healthcare Communications" (2025). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 7318.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/7318
Abstract
Effective internal communication is essential to creating a shared organizational safety culture, improving knowledge diffusion, and delivering high quality patient care. This study examined the readability of internal healthcare communications, including policies, procedures, and internal newsletter articles, at a mid-sized healthcare system in Michigan. Readability significantly influences cognitive load, information retention, and knowledge diffusion. Poor readability hinders these items, limiting engagement and knowledge transfer. By utilizing established readability tools, including the Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level scales, this quantitative, cross-sectional study aimed to determine whether internal healthcare documents meet the readability standards recommended by the American Medical Association. The study determined that all examined document types are written at levels that far exceed the recommended benchmark. Findings from this study highlight that improved communication strategies are necessary to spread information and enhance patient safety on the journey to zero harm. This research addresses a gap in literature regarding internal communications in healthcare, providing insight into the accessibility of these materials to the workforce.
