Explaining Informed Consent Information in Lay Terms

This requirement cannot be over-emphasized. Medicine has its own language, as obscure to the lay person as the Latin and Greek from which much of it is derived. Often we in health care do not realize that we are speaking in unfamiliar terms. It takes just as much conscious effort for the RTM to solicit the IC clearly as it takes the PI to write it understandably. The presenter should not "speak down" to the prospective participant, since that can be interpreted as intimidation (coercion issue) or condescension (trust issue). Typically, language should be targeted at a 6th grade level - the same level that most public speakers (news anchors, politicians, preachers) use, although in the case of IC it can, to a certain extent, be tailored to the individual. Writing in a simple and straight forward manner is a complex language skill that requires development to acquire and effort to apply. But it can be done.

The video below shows an Informed Consent dialogue with the PI using medical terminology. Note the potential participant's two different responses when the PI uses only medical jargon (and does not recognize the lack of comprehesion by her potential participant) versus when she defines the medical words in lay terminology.

Click on the picture above to view the video.