‘Yen Receives Prestigious Early-Career Paper Award’ (Geisel News – August 5, 2024 – Full Article)
Article Excerpt: In (Renata) Yen’s paper, she and her co-authors aimed to describe key, measurable elements of spoken plain language (the use of familiar, clear language) that could be assessed and reported back to clinicians for self-reflection.
“Intuitively, we know that good communication and use of plain language in healthcare encounters improve outcomes, including patients’ emotional health, symptom relief, and functional status. Yet there is limited research on how to measure and report on spoken plain language back to clinicians,” explains Yen, whose research focuses on patient-clinician communication, particularly for patients with lower health literacy or who are socially disadvantaged.