• R Vallès-Fernández, A Morón-Besolí, A Franzi-Siso, J Real-Gatius, and E L Mariño-Hernández.
• Servicio de Atención Primaria Cerdanyola-Ripollet, Institut Català de la Salut, Ripollet, Barcelona, Spain. farma@cerdanyola.scs.es
• Aten Primaria. 2006 Apr 15; 37 (6): 339-46.

ObjectiveTo determine whether posters/leaflets increase doctors' information on the allergies and on the medication their patients are taking and patients' understanding of their treatment.DesignFirst stage: multi-centre transversal descriptive study. Second stage: intervention with control and without randomisation.SettingPrimary care medical emergency services (MES).ParticipantsMES patients under prescribed drug treatment.InterventionsUse of posters/leaflets.Main Measurements1) Proportion of patients for whom the doctor was ignorant of allergies to drugs or of accompanying medication. 2) Proportion of prescriptions in which patients understood the dosage of the medication prescribed.Sourcead hoc questionnaire to patients.Analysischi2 test (category variables). In some cases, the Breslow-Day and Tarone tests were conducted.ResultsTotal patients included, 1233; 1766 prescriptions analysed; 53.4% women. Mean age: 29+/-18 years old. 1) Doctor's understanding of accompanying medication: at the second stage, drop of 25.5% (95% CI, 33.5-17.5) for intervention group versus drop of 12.5% (95% CI, 19.8-5.2) for control group, in the number of patients for whom the doctor did not know the medication (P=.024). 2) Patient's understanding of dosage: at the second stage, increase of 16.8% (95% CI, 9.8-23.8) for intervention group, versus a decrease of 1% in control group, in the medicines whose dosage the patient was aware of (P<.001).ConclusionsThe dissemination of posters/leaflets was effective in increasing patients' knowledge of their medication's dosage and doctors' understanding of questions affecting prescription.

10 keywords...

hide…