Knowledge of prescribed medication information among patients with limited English proficiency in Sri Lanka

Abstract

BackgroundPatients’ knowledge on prescribed medications play a key role in the long term management of cardiac diseases and in determining their outcome. The present study evaluates the knowledge about prescribed medication among cardiac patients and aim to identify factors influencing knowledge.MethodsA descriptive-cross-sectional study was conducted among 200 adult patients attending clinics at the Cardiology Unit of the National Hospital of Sri Lanka. Knowledge assessment focused on four different sections; drug name, dose, frequency and indication. The total score of 60 was calculated by giving each component the following weighted scores; drug name = 20, indication = 20, drug dose = 10 and frequency = 10. A binary logistic regression analysis to evaluate factors associated with ‘good knowledge’ (total score ≥ 40) was performed.ResultsAmong 200 participants 56.5% (n = 113) were males. Mean age was 59.7 ± 8.2 years and a majority (n = 170, 85.0%) were older than 50 years of age. Sinhala was the primary language of 91.5% (n = 183) of participants, while English was the primary language in only two of the study participants (1.0%). Eighty four percent of the participants were educated up to secondary education or above, while 2.5% (n = 5) had no formal education. The overall knowledge (total score-60) on prescribed medications among the study population was ‘poor’ (score ≤ 20) in 46%, ‘adequate’ (score 21–40) in 36.5% and ‘good’ (score ≥ 40) in 17.5%. The results of the binary logistic regression analysis indicates that Secondary (OR-1.53) and Tertiary levels (OR-2.79) of education, self-reported perception of illness as being Moderate (OR-1.23) or Severe (OR-1.70) and being educated by a doctor (as reported by patients) (OR-1.69) significantly increased the odds of having a ‘Good Knowledge of Drugs’. Majority of the patients were unable to read and understand the information written in English. The doctor’s contributed towards educating on drug information only in 33.0% of the patients.ConclusionIn a resource-poor setting in patients with Limited English Proficiency, lower level of education and misperception of illness severity resulted in reduced knowledge on prescribed medications. Furthermore, being educated by a doctor significantly improved knowledge. However the doctors’ contribution at present to deliver quality health information to their patients was at an unsatisfactory level.

<p>Knowledge on Dispensed Medications and Its Determinants Among Patients Attending Outpatient Pharmacy at Chencha Primary Level Hospital, Southwest Ethiopia</p>

“…This result is consistent with the study conducted in Sri Lanka in which 17.5% of respondents had good knowledge of dispensed medications. 10 The result of the current study was lower than the study conducted in Ghana in which the percentage of respondents who had adequate knowledge on dispensed medications was 31%. 18 This dissimilarity may due to the study setting difference, which means in our study, we conducted in a hospital setting whereas in the previous Ghana study, they conducted in a community pharmacy setting.…”

“…A pre-tested a structured interview guide was used, which consisted questions on socio-demographic information, health related characteristics and knowledge of dispensed medicines. This questionnaire was adopted from previous researches [5][6][7]10,11,14,15 and modified to fit the present study.…”

“…Numerous studies have been done to determine patients' knowledge on dispensed medications. [5][6][7][10][11][12][13] However, most studies considered only one medicine per prescription to assess patients' knowledge level. In Ethiopia, there are limited studies conducted at primary hospital level.…”

Ward-based clinical pharmacists and hospital readmission: a non-randomized controlled trial in Sri Lanka

“…In low- and middle-income countries clinical pharmacy services are limited 9 , 10 and implementation of such services could faces various challenges, such as: (i) lack of clinically qualified pharmacists; 11 (ii) poor pharmaceutical literacy among patients; 12 (iii) under-utilization of research evidence due to underdeveloped health-care systems; 13 (iv) restrictions in medicines regulatory capacity; 13 (v) poor availability of essential medicines; and (vi) limitations in accessing high quality medicines 11 . Hence, findings from implementation of clinical pharmacy services in high-income countries cannot be generalizable to low- and middle-income countries.…”

Patient’s Perceptions and Attitude toward Medications in Saudi Arabia

“…Because of lousy health education during school age and week health education for the public, the results of difficulties in the reading of drug name better than what reported by Perera T. et al maybe because most of the country's population are not speaking very well in the English language, the finding of perception reading expiry date of medication could not compare with other studies because it was not investigated. [17] The finding showed one-third of the responders use medications without any information and almost half of the patients prescribed the medications to their friend or family expected the same disease without official diagnosis and prescriptions. That is related to dial with medications as look like as food or cosmetic without any health information that has led to progression of disease or complications or appear of drug-related problems with the patients.…”