Hand dermatitis: Readability, quality, and comprehensiveness of online patient health resources

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Hand dermatitis causes significant physical, psychosocial, and economic burden. The internet is a major source of health education for patients. Here, we evaluate the readability, quality, and comprehensiveness of online health resources on hand dermatitis. Methods: On July 27th 2021, a Google search was conducted with terms “hand dermatitis” and “hand eczema” and the first 40 items were evaluated. Articles that were advertisements, blogs, intended for professionals, scientific papers, or irrelevant were excluded. Contents of articles were evaluated using several validated grading tools/criteria for readability and quality and Pearson’s correlation assessed the relationship between readability and quality. Results: Twenty-three articles met inclusion criteria. Average readability was at the 11th-grade level (range 7.7-15.6). University-level reading comprehension (≥13th grade) was required for 5/23 websites. The highest quality website based on the Discern instrument was Medical News Today (55.5);nearly half of the websites (48%, 11/23) rated as poor or very poor. The average JAMA benchmark score was only 1.4/4. Nineteen websites contained images (83%) and only 4 websites (21%) included images representing hand dermatitis in skin of color (SOC). Quality and readability of the articles were significantly correlated (P =.02). Conclusion: Our results demonstrate that generally, articles were too difficult to read, have low quality, and lack representation of SOC images. With increases in hand dermatitis in the setting of frequent hand-hygiene practices during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important for online health information to improve in readability, quality, and inclusion of SOC images to optimize online patient education.