Abstract
Understanding clinical information can be challenging for patients, their caregivers, and other lay audiences because of complex scientific concepts, interventions, procedures and/or evaluated outcomes. It is also challenging for health-care providers to effectively communicate such medical research to patients, which is essential for patients’ informed involvement in shared decision-making (SDM). Advanced practice providers (APPs) are on the frontlines of care, often providing detailed and extensive education for patients in and outside of clinical trials. In recent years, scientific researchers, particularly those involved in clinical trial research, have been increasingly using plain language summaries (PLS) to summarize journal publications and conference abstracts in easy-to-read nontechnical language while providing key findings and implications. In this review article, we aim to provide an overview of PLS and show by using published examples, how such communication tools may assist APPs to communicate medical research effectively to patients. This evolving form of scientific communication may be useful to APPs, not only for translating the findings of clinical trials and other health-care research to patients and their caregivers, but also facilitate informed SDM, help them keep up to date on the latest clinical research, and share research perspectives with their care teams.
