It's good to test patient, provider, or public education material on its intended audience before sending it out. But tight timelines and budgets make comprehensive user testing difficult, and so, it's too often cut.
This short We ♥ Health Literacy post is about this problem. It advocates for at least a brief pilot test and offers some simple suggestions for doing one. It asserts that, if you can't do proper user testing, pilot testing can be done quickly and cheaply.
Have you done a brief pilot test when you weren't able to do full user testing? Please share your experience. Any tips?