Assessment of Patient Knowledge Regarding Drugs Prescribed and Dispensed in Some Health Insurance Outpatient Clinics in Alexandria

Rational prescription and use of drugs has been a concern in both developed and developing countries during the last two decades and been promoted by WHO and others.

The quality of dispensing and patient knowledge of drugs has been overlooked, although patient knowledge is considered as one of the essential prerequisites for patient compliance with treatment.

The aim of this study is to assess patients’ knowledge regarding drugs prescribed and dispensed and to identify its determinants in five outpatient clinics affiliated to Health Insurance Organization in Alexandria.

This study is a part of a larger drug utilization study, where a random sample of 30 encounters per each physician of all 62 general practitioners, internal medicine and ENT specialists working in the selected clinics was carried out as recommended by WHO for studies describing current treatment practice, so the required sample of patients was 1860.

All interviewed patients were asked about names of prescribed drugs, dose regimens for all prescribed drugs, duration of treatments and reasons for prescription. Patient reported each attribute of patient drug knowledge on a 2 point scale that scored 0 (did not know the attribute) or 1 (knew the attribute).

The mean patient knowledge score was In relation to factors independently associated with patient knowledge score, two factors were significant namely, patient occupation and number of dispensed drugs.

Based on this study, training of pharmacists to be active members of the health care team and to offer useful advice to patients about health and dispensed drugs is very critical for improvement of the quality of their practice.

Within the available resources and existing level of training, the quality of dispensing can be improved by giving priority to patients with a low level of knowledge of dispensed drugs, particularly older patients, those with low educational level and those with greater number of drugs.

Intervention studies aimed at improving the quality of dispensing should be carried out using patient knowledge scores.