We might be planning to take it digital but there’s life in the printed version of our iconic Screening Tests For You and Your Baby booklet for a while yet!
We have given it a bit of a spring clean and made a number of improvements we’ve been wanting to get round to for a while. For the first time, we have also published the booklet in HTML format. The 8 HTML sections, covering every antenatal and newborn screening test:
- are easy to view and navigate on laptop or mobile devices
- can have their text size increased in the web browser to make large print versions
- work with screen readers for people who would like audio versions
We will blog more about the accessibility benefits of HTML leaflets in the near future.
Many improvements
Here’s a summary of the changes to the leaflet. In this version we have:
- replaced the PHE logo with a statement under the leaflet title to say that it has been created by PHE (this is for consistency with other NHS leaflets)
- made lots of improvements to the introduction, including adding a link to the animation and a new confidentiality section
- changed subheadings so they’re no longer questions (this is because the old-style FAQ format is not good for users)
- added prominent links to NHS.UK at the bottom of every double-page spread
- improved the results section in the infectious diseases chapter
- renamed the ‘physical abnormalities (mid-pregnancy scan)’ chapter to ‘11 physical conditions (20-week scan)’
- substantially rewritten the description of the 20-week scan for clarity
- updated the prevalence of the conditions screened for in newborn blood spot screening
- improved the descriptions of Down’s syndrome, Edwards’ syndrome and Patau’s syndrome (based on the work we’ve done with the Down’s Syndrome Association and SOFT to prepare for the introduction of non-invasive prenatal testing)
Moving to the new version
The next national print run of the leaflet will use this new version. The leaflets will probably be in stock for orders placed with national print provider APS from about mid-June.
In the meantime you can safely use up your stock of the existing version of the leaflet. Please do not recycle or destroy old stock.
PHE Screening blogs
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2 comments
Comment by Rhonda Reddington posted on
I am a screening midwife in a London hospital.
The PHE team had reached out to speak with service users about the changes they planned for this leaflet. Having the views of pregnant women who will be seeking information and recommendations from this leaflet, is invaluable. It helps to give real opinions and views of real women. Its important that PHE listen to the needs of women, so that support can be adjust to need.
Four pregnant women attended this session with me. They looked specifically at the translated versions of the screening information and discussed their thoughts on them. Although they had each spoken with a translator or used the English they have to decipher screening, they all agreed that the translated versions helped them to better understand the conditions they (or baby) was being screened for.
They were also involved with different activities, like reviewing the existing leaflet, online HTML version, animation, films, short and medium versions of the screening leaflet.
The session went very well, was of a relaxed nature and each of the women were very happy to contributing to the future of screening literature.
Thank you for coming to see us. RR
Comment by Nick Johnstone-Waddell posted on
Hi Rhonda,
Thanks for your comment and for allowing us to visit you! It's always good to meet members of the public and get their views on how to improve our screening information. This was a really useful session relating to our work to make greater use of digital content to support informed choice. We'll be reporting back on all our research in due course - so as usual keep an eye on the blog for updates.
All the best, Nick