Dental Tribune United Kingdom Edition

GC EUROPE N.V. Head Office Tel. +32.16.74.10.00 info@gceurope.com http://www.gceurope.com GC UNITED KINGDOM Ltd. Tel. +44.1908.218.999 info@uk.gceurope.com http://uk.gceurope.com With G-ænial you can reinforce your aesthetic skills and ability to match every restoration with nature thanks to the straightforward shading system. The choice of the enamel shades is made according to the age of the patient: • JE - Junior Enamel for youngsters • AE - Adult Enamel for adults • SE - Senior Enamel for your senior patients Selecting the right shades has never been easier! Create æ-motion with G-ænial from GC The all-round composite for aesthetically invisible single and multi shade restorations. Introducing the age-specific shade selection system. Education (NIACE) which can be found here: www.niace.org. uk/misc/smog-calculator/ smogcalc.php From this same site there’s a link to a very use- ful document called Readability which you can download for free. It will help you interpret the SMOG results and produce easily read print material too. You can use an Internet search engine to find other read- ability test tools for your website. You should also consider how accessible your website is. Much information can be found on the Accessibility section of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) website: www.w3.org Some of the suggested tools are probably best used by your website devel- oper as they are quite ‘techy’. Recognising this, British Standard 8878:2010 Web Ac- cessibility: Code of Practice (BS 8878 for short) was developed and published in December 2010 to help non-technical people op- timise the accessibility of their websites. The standard is avail- able to purchase from the BSI shop (shop.bsigroup.com) for £100, although there’s lots of free information about it here: shop. bsigroup.com The Scottish Accessible Infor- mation Forum (www.saifscot- land.org.uk) is another source of useful information. Now look at the patient in- formation leaflets you’ve pro- duced in-house – such as your patient welcome pack. As well as applying the readability tests, I suggest you download the free PiF Guide to Appraising Health Information from the Patient In- formation Forum website www. pifonline.org.uk Take a look also at the Plain English Campaign website (www.plainenglish.co.uk) which has a number of free guides, including one entitled How to write medical informa- tion in plain English. It also has grammar guides on various sub- jects such as punctuating sen- tences. You may wish to apply for a Plain English Campaign Crystal Mark – a seal of approval for the clarity of a document. You could be one of the first dental prac- tices to join a list of health or- ganisations with Crystal Marks that includes the British Dental Association and the General Dental Council. There is also an Internet Crystal Mark for web- sites. An example of a website with a Crystal Mark is that of the Health & Care Professions Coun- cil (www.hpc-uk.org). Next, examine the leaflets from commercial organisations that you make available to your patients. By now you should be getting a feel for good readability and accessibility but if you have any doubts, run them through one of the tests mentioned above. I also wonder whether good readability and accessibility should influence the choice of magazines and newspa- pers you put in the patients’ lounge. Unfortunately, I’ve not been able to find any analyses of magazines and only limited information for newspapers. The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) did an analysis of editorials us- ing SMOG and found average scores (in terms of years of education needed for compre- hension) as follows: The Sun – under 14 The Daily Express – under 16 The Telegraph – over 17 The Guardian – over 17 As a comparison, input- ting the first three paragraphs of this article into the same SMOG calculator accessed via the NIACE website gave a re- sult of 16.9. Finally, when looking up information on HealthWatch – the new consumer ‘champion’ for health and social care in England – I was interested to discover (on www.cqc.org.uk) two versions of a document Preparing for HealthWatch: CQC’s plan to set up Health- Watch England. One was ‘nor- mal’ and the other was ‘Easy to read’. Have a look at them and note the differences. DT About the author Jacqui Goss. A proven man- ager of change and driver of dramatic business growth, Jac- qui Goss is the managing part- ner of Yes!RESULTS. By using Yes!RESULTS dental practices see an increase in treatment plan take-up, improved patient satis- faction and more appointments resulting from general enquiries. Yes!RESULTS turns good practices into great practices. Practice Management 17November 12-18, 2012United Kingdom Edition