CHIC President Dorothy L. Smith Authors
Lead Article in European Society of Clinical Pharmacy Newsletter
Consumer
Health Information Corporation President Dorothy
L. Smith, PharmD., wrote
the lead article in the May 2002 issue of the European Society
of Clinical Pharmacy's Newsletter. The society is based in Brussels,
Belgium.
Writing on the topic, "Patient
Education: A Critical Component of Pharmaceutical Care," Dr.
Smith observed that, "Health professionals and pharmaceutical
companies can dedicate significant amount of time and money
to the development of patient education programs but their efforts
will be wasted if the patient information does not meet the
needs of the patient."
She noted that her company
had more than 20 years of actual face-to-face clinical experience
in counseling patients about their medications. "That experience
has given us insights into the mind of the consumer and patients--for
instance, why they make the decisions they do and why they follow
or do not follow instructions," she wrote. "It also helps us
develop and present information that consumer and patients can
understand and use in making correct decisions about their therapy
and disease management."
Dr. Smith said the key to
successful patient education programs is to recognize that patients
make three critical decisions that will determine how effective
their drug therapy will be:
-
The patient decides whether or not to take
the medicine prescribed initially. As many as 10% to 20% of
all initial prescriptions are never filled because patients
are not convinced they need the medication.
- The patient decides whether or not to refill the prescription.
30% to 85% of patients do not get their refills. They quit because
they decide the side effects are too annoying, the drug is not
working, or they forget to get their refill.
- The patient decides how and when to take the medicine and
what to do if they think they are developing a side effect.
At least 50% of the people who do get the prescription filled
do not take it correctly. This means the drug cannot be maximally
effective.
Before starting to develop
editorial content or design for a patient education project,
"it is essential to identify all the potential patient compliance
problems patients can expected to encounter in 'real life' situations,"
Dr. Smith said. "This stage--too often neglected in developing
patient information materials--is based on practical experience
as well as research that has been conducted on the specific
disease, the drug, and the target population."
"Similarly," she continued,
"we identify the barriers that health professionals can be expected
to encounter in their clinical practice when they are answering
patient questions or attempting to use patient compliance tools."
Finally, Dr. Smith said,
"we identify and apply behavior modification techniques (based
on the Transtheoretical Model of Change) that recognize the
need for patients to receive different types of information
at each stage of their decision-making process."