ArticleExploratory research in clinical and social pharmacy2023
Challenges encountered by pharmacy staff in using prescription medication labels during medication counselling with older adults and solutions employed: A mixed-methods study.
Article in Exploratory research in clinical and social pharmacy, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 2 citations in OpenAlex.
- The role of pictograms in improving patients' medication adherence: a systematic review.BMC health services research · 2026Pooled it
- Language-related self-efficacy of pharmacy staff in providing medication counselling to older adults in a linguistically diverse setting.Exploratory research in clinical and social pharmacy · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Prescription medication labels (PMLs) predominantly dispensed in English, are an important adjunct to medication counselling. PMLs are routinely used by pharmacy staff to counsel older adults about their medications. This study sought to identify challenges that pharmacy staff observe older adults face in using their PMLs, and to identify and quantify solutions employed by pharmacy staff during medication counselling to address such challenges. Methods: Ten in-depth interviews were done with primary care pharmacy staff to gather the range of challenges and solutions. Subsequently, a quantitative survey, informed by the qualitative findings, was administered to 121 pharmacy staff to assess if the reported solutions were commonly used. Results: The two main challenges were incongruity between PML language (English) and older adults' language proficiency, and poor PML legibility. The solutions, classified under three themes, were simplifying medication information on PMLs, supplementing PMLs with additional medication information and mitigating poor readability. Conclusions: Pharmacy staff observed challenges faced by older adults in using PMLs during medication counselling. Ad-hoc improvisations by pharmacy staff to PMLs were pervasive. System-level PML improvements, such as provision of legible bilingual medication instructions, pharmaceutical pictograms and additional medication information, through patient information leaflets or using quick response (QR) codes on PMLs, should be considered. This will facilitate patient-provider communication, especially in settings with language dissonance between PMLs and patients.
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