Patients Knowledge of Prescribed Medications and Factors Affecting it in a Tertiary Care, Public, Teaching Hospital in New Delhi, India

Abstract

Objectives: To study patients’ knowledge about their prescribed medication and factors affecting it. Patients and Methods: An observational, cross-sectional study was conducted in 500 outpatients in the Medicine department of a tertiary care teaching hospital. The patients were interviewed about prescribed medicines using a structured questionnaire. The average consultation time and average dispensing time was also recorded for 100 interactions each. Results: Among 500 patients interviewed, 55% were females. Hindi was the primary language in 99.6% of the patients and majority of the patients 75.2% could not read English. The mean total score for patients’ medication knowledge was 38.87 ± 10.42 (maximum 60). 95% of participants had ‘Adequate to Good Knowledge’, and 5% had ‘Poor Knowledge’. Only 1.8% of the patients surveyed had complete knowledge of their prescribed medications. Various factors like age > 60 years, female gender, illiteracy, inability to read English, the doctor informing the patient only in writing and the pharmacist not explaining the medication information were associated with lower scores. The average consultation time was 284.6 ± 172.87 seconds and the average dispensing time was 60.45 ± 22.3 seconds. Conclusion: Overall the patients appear to have an adequate basic knowledge of their prescribed medications despite inability to understand the language and less time given for doctor patient pharmacist interaction. Interventions are required to improve health care providers understanding of what is required to educate the patients about the same. This is especially so for patients with risk factors contributing to their low knowledge about prescribed treatment.