How to Share Clinical Research With Patients and Clinicians

Your trial results are published. The same week, two emails arrive. A woman who took part asks, in two lines, what the study found and whether it means anything for her. A consultant in another hospital asks whether the result is strong enough to change what she prescribes.

Both are asking about the same paper. They need different answers, and the journal article gives neither of them what they need in the form they need it. Here is how to share clinical research with patients and clinicians without saying more, or less, than the paper supports.

Two Audiences, Two Questions

Start by being clear about who you are writing for. The same finding needs a different first sentence for each:

Aspect	Patients and participants	Clinicians
Their question	What did you find, and does it matter for someone like me?	Is this strong enough to change practice, and for whom?
What they need	One main message, absolute numbers, side effects, what happens next	Population, comparator, effect size with uncertainty, harms, limits on who it applies to
What to avoid	Jargon, relative risk on its own, anything that reads as personal medical advice	Overstating beyond the trial's population or setting
Where they meet it	A waiting room, a patient group newsletter, a letter to participants	A journal club, a guideline discussion, a one-page summary in a staff room

Write the patient version first. If you can explain the result plainly, the clinician version is easier, because you already know what the one main message is.

Write the Patient Version in Plain Language

A plain English summary is, in the words of one NIHR training toolkit, "a clear, brief summary of the research" written for members of the public, "without jargon and with an explanation of any technical terms." Our guide on how to write a plain language summary walks through it step by step.

For health material in particular, the CDC's Clear Communication Index is a useful check. Its 20 items include having one main message, placing that message where people see it first, explaining what numbers mean, and avoiding calculations the reader has to do. If you can, ask two or three patients or members of your trial's patient advisory group to read a draft and tell you what they think it says.

Use Numbers People Can Picture

Numbers are where clinical communication most often goes wrong. The Patient Information Forum's guidance on communicating benefits, risks and uncertainties gives a short set of rules worth following for both audiences:

• Use natural frequencies, such as 10 in 100 rather than 10 percent.
• Compare like with like: 1 in 100 with 2 in 100, not 1 in 100 with 1 in 50.
• Do not use relative risk on its own. A risk that goes from 1 in 100 to 2 in 100 has doubled, but only 1 more person in 100 is affected.
• Pair the numbers with a picture, such as a grid of 100 figures.
• Say plainly when the evidence is uncertain or of low quality.

A Worked Example

Say your trial found that a complication happened to 8 in 100 people on usual care and 6 in 100 on the new treatment (these are made-up numbers). Here are three true ways to say it:

• "The new treatment cut the risk by 25 percent." This is the relative reduction: 2 out of 8. It sounds large and tells a patient little on its own.
• "Out of 100 people, 8 had the complication on usual care and 6 on the new treatment." This is the version for patients, ideally with a picture of 100 figures.
• "About 50 people would need the new treatment for one fewer person to have the complication." This is the number needed to treat (1 divided by 2 in 100), and it is the version many clinicians look for.

Put the second sentence in the patient material and all three in the clinician summary, with the confidence interval and the side effects alongside.

If Your Trial Ran in the EU, a Lay Summary Is Required

For trials under the EU Clinical Trials Regulation, which has applied since 31 January 2022, Article 37(4) requires the sponsor to submit a summary of the results within one year of the end of the trial, "accompanied by a summary written in a manner that is understandable to laypersons." Its content is set out in Annex V of the regulation.

That summary is the sponsor's duty, not the individual author's. If you are not the sponsor, find out who is writing it and make sure your own patient materials say the same thing in the same numbers. Two different plain-language accounts of one trial will confuse the very people you want to reach.

Consent and Privacy Come Before Anything You Post

Outreach material is publication too. The ICMJE recommendations on protecting research participants say identifying information, "including names, initials, or hospital numbers," should not be published in written descriptions, photographs or pedigrees unless it is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication.

In practice, for videos, posters and social posts:

• No photos or footage of identifiable patients, wards or records without written consent.
• No case details that someone who knows the patient could recognize.
• No participant quotes unless they agreed to that use in writing.
• Check with your ethics committee if your plans go beyond what participants consented to.

Formats for a Waiting Room or a Ward

Clinical settings are hard places to read a paper. People are waiting, worried or busy. Formats that work there share three traits: short, readable at a glance, and pointing somewhere for more.

• A one-page printed infographic with a QR code to the full summary, for noticeboards and leaflet racks.
• A short captioned video with no sound needed, for waiting-room screens.
• An audio version, for people who prefer to listen or are more comfortable in another language.
• A one-page clinician summary with the absolute numbers, the population and the harms, for staff rooms and journal clubs.

Ask your clinical team and communications office before putting anything up in a clinical area. They will know what is allowed and where people actually look. To record where your materials went and who they reached, our guide to showing your research reached people has a simple log you can keep.

Where Amplify Fits

For clinical work, the most important property of any summary is that it says nothing the paper does not. Amplify generates its formats from the PDF you upload and nothing else, with no open-web filler, and every piece carries the title, the authors and a link back to the paper of record. Each format arrives as three variants you can edit line by line, so you can put in the exact natural-frequency sentence you want. A person reviews every format before release, and nothing goes out until you approve it.

The formats map well onto clinical settings:

• A one-page, print-ready infographic for a noticeboard or a ward.
• A vertical short of 45 to 60 seconds, which suits screens and social posts.
• An audio brief in English, with 21 more languages on request (22 in total, including Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi and Portuguese).
• A video abstract of about 3 minutes for the trial or lab page.

The embeddable widget sits beside the paper on your own page, so patients and clinicians can read, listen and ask questions about the paper without leaving it. You keep ownership, ResearchBunny does not train on your work, and you can delete a paper and its materials at any time. A summary of a paper is not medical advice, so keep your usual clinical and ethics checks in place.

A trial is only finished for the people in it when they hear what it found. Share it with them in words and numbers they can use, and give clinicians the version they need to decide.

See what Amplify makes from one clinical paper