There's a version of health communication that is technically accurate, legally safe, and completely useless to the person reading it. It's written in passive voice, peppered with medical jargon, and formatted like a pharmaceutical insert. It communicates the right information in a way that reaches almost no one. Here's how to do it differently.
The readability problem in health content
Studies consistently show that health literacy among patients is lower than most healthcare providers assume. A significant proportion of adults struggle to understand standard medical instructions. But even highly educated patients, professionals, executives, people with advanced degrees, disengage from health content that reads like a clinical brief.
The issue isn't intelligence. Medical language was developed for professionals communicating with professionals. When it's deployed at patients, it creates distance instead of understanding.
What 'conversational' means
Conversational doesn't mean casual. It doesn't mean sacrificing accuracy or sounding breezy about serious topics. It means writing at the level your reader is at, not the level your compliance team is comfortable with.
It means choosing 'high blood pressure' over 'hypertension' unless you're explaining what hypertension means. It means using active voice: 'Take this medication in the morning' instead of 'This medication is to be administered in the morning hours.' It means starting with what matters to the patient, the outcome, the impact on their daily life, before explaining the mechanism.
The empathy gap in health writing
Most health content is written from the perspective of the provider, not the patient. It answers the questions the organisation wants to answer, not the questions the patient is asking.
Patients who just received a diagnosis don't first want to know about your hospital's infrastructure. They want to know what this means for them, what their life looks like now, what the treatment involves, what they should be doing tonight. Health content that starts there earns trust in a way that institutional content never can.
A framework for making the switch
Start every piece of patient-facing content with one question: What is the reader feeling right now, and what do they most need to know? Let that answer shape the opening. Then ask: What would I explain if this were a conversation with a family member who just got this diagnosis? Write that. Then refine for accuracy, not the other way around.
This approach, which we use at BrightArc Partners when developing health content for our clients, consistently produces writing that is both clinically sound and genuinely useful to the people reading it.
Why this is a brand decision, not just a writing decision
How a healthcare brand writes is how it treats its patients, at least in the first interaction. Content that is clear, empathetic, and respectful of the reader's intelligence builds trust before the appointment is even booked. Content that is opaque, jargon-heavy, or evasive does the opposite.
In a sector where trust is the most valuable currency, the way you communicate is as important as what you communicate.
