ArticleBMC health services research2018
Patients' ability to read and understand dosing instructions of their own medicines - a cross sectional study in a hospital and community pharmacy setting.
Article in BMC health services research, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Exploration of Oral Sodium Bicarbonate Acceptance and Adherence among Chronic Kidney Disease Patients with Metabolic Acidosis: A Multicentre Cross-Sectional Survey.The Malaysian journal of medical sciences : MJMS · 2025Article
- Patient Experience Regarding Medication-Related Information Received in a Rural Private Polyclinic Setting in Vietnam.Journal of patient experience · 2025Article
- Article
- Determinants of medication non-adherence among patients with chronic diseases at community pharmacy settings in South Gondar Zone, Northwest Ethiopia: a multicenter cross-sectional study.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Antimicrobial Stewardship for Outpatients with Chronic Bone and Joint Infections in the Orthopaedic Clinic of an Academic Tertiary Hospital, South Africa.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- The extent of community pharmacists' involvement in detecting and resolving Drug Related Problems (DRPs) in prescriptions - A real time study from Sri Lanka.Exploratory research in clinical and social pharmacy · 2021Article
- Developing and user testing new pharmacy label formats-A study to inform labelling standards.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2021Article
- Are medications safely used by residents in elderly care homes? - A multi-centre observational study from Sri Lanka.PloS one · 2020Observational
- The Need to Strengthen the Role of the Pharmacist in Sri Lanka: Perspectives.Pharmacy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- Exploring evaluation measures of large language models for family caregiver use: A scoping review.Digital healthReview
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Abstract
backgroundPoor communication of medicines information to patients may cause medication errors. We assessed the completeness and readability of dosing instructions provided by pharmacists on dispensing labels and knowledge among patients on dosing instructions of their medicines.
methodsA cross sectional study was conducted in a selected teaching hospital, and a community pharmacy, among 800 patients selected through a systematic sampling method, during a period of 2 months. Completeness of dosing instructions were assessed against a checklist. Patients were asked to read dosing instructions to assess readability. Patient knowledge on dosing instructions were determined through a questionnaire. Completeness, readability and knowledge were scored out of 10 for each dispensing label.
resultsA total of 1200 and 1372 dispensing labels were assessed in the hospital and community settings respectively. The median score out of 10, for completeness, readability and patient knowledge of dosing instructions were 6.7, 8.3 and 7.5 respectively in the hospital, and 7.5, 8.0 and 7.5 respectively in the community. Only a few dispensing labels had the route of administration (hospital, 0.5%; community, 0.8%) and the duration of treatment written (hospital, 0.25%; community, 0.65%) on them. Name (hospital, 48%; community, 27.3%) and strength (hospital, 40.2%; community, 36.6%) of medicines on dispensing labels were frequently misread. In both settings, readability scores significantly differed with education level (P < 0.001).
conclusionsSome important dosing instructions were missing in dispensing labels. Readability of dosing instructions by patients was also not 100% and differed by their education level. Pharmacists did not adhere to a standard procedure in providing dosing instructions leading to communication gaps with patients. Hence we recommend the development of a standard procedure to provide complete, clear and simple dosing instructions to patients, and continuous training for pharmacists on proper communication of dosing instructions to patients.
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