Clinical evaluation of two strategies for improving patient recall of prior drug therapy.

Abstract

The ability to recall details of current and prior drug therapy was evaluated in two studies employing a total of 94 patients with inflammatory polyarthritis. Ten per cent of patients were unable to completely recall the names of their current anti‐inflammatory drugs and eighty‐three per cent of patients to completely recall the details of prior anti‐inflammatory drug therapy. Prompting firstly with the proprietary names of drugs and thereafter with a pill board substantially enhanced recall particularly for prior NSAID therapy. Nineteen per cent of responses obtained with verbal prompting were inaccurate. No such problems were encountered in responses obtained using the pill board. These findings indicate that a complete and accurate drug history can only be obtained in the majority of patients using recall enhancement strategies.

A prospective validation study in South-West Nigeria on caregiver report of childhood pneumonia and antibiotic treatment using Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) questions

“…Therefore, further research into their use may be warranted but future surveys should consider incorporating similar visual cues and a number of DHS surveys have already incorporated their use. Pill boards have been shown to improve accurate recall of drugs in other settings [22].…”

Do prescribed drugs always follow the patients to hospital?

“…However, research has shown that patients are often unable to tell exactly which medications they have been taking [2][3][4]. Even when they are requested to bring all their medication, there is no guarantee of completeness [5].…”

Paediatric and Adolescent Rheumatology [1-4]

“…Mean HAQ score was 1.3 (95% CI 1.1-1.5). Mean aBMD was 0.991 (95% CI 0.956-1.026) g/cm 2 at the lumbar spine and 0.823 (95% CI 0.769-0.877) at the hip. Mean Z-scores were À0.314 (95% CI À0.631 to 0.003) at the lumbar spine and À0.509 (95% CI À0.922 to À0.095) at the hip.…”

“…Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry of the lumbar spine and femoral neck was performed. Results were recorded as areal bone mineral density (aBMD, g/cm 2 ) and Z-scores. The associations between putative risk factors and BMD were examined using linear regression with adjustments for age, sex, height and weight.…”