Abstract
Patients with limited English proficiency living in the U.K. receive prescribed medication labels in English. These patients are at risk of worse health outcomes compared with the general population. This article describes a service evaluation of the use of bilingual dispensing labels to facilitate patient understanding of medicine administration instructions. Recruited patients answered two questionnaires to assess engagement with and understanding of their medicine labels. The first was completed at the point of dispensing, and the second within six weeks. Questionnaires were either self-completed or via facilitation over the telephone. A total of 151 participants completed the first questionnaire, and 130 completed the follow-up. Key findings highlighted the lack of engagement by participants with English-language labels and their reliance on asking for help from pharmacy staff, friends, or family to understand the information. However, when provided with information in their preferred language, they reported high levels of understanding and sought help less frequently from a third party. This study has shown that this service has improved understanding of labelling information in this target group.
Highlights
Medication non-adherence remains a major obstacle to the effective delivery of healthcare globally [1], and is reported to account for 33% of all preventable drug-related hospital admissions [2]
Improving access to adequate administration information can have an impact on medication adherence [4], preventing medication safety incidents, including medicines-related hospital admissions, and reducing associated costs [2,5,6]
A complete data summary can be found in the Supplementary Materials. These exploratory results show that people with limited English proficiency struggle to understand the English information provided on dispensing labels
Summary
Medication non-adherence remains a major obstacle to the effective delivery of healthcare globally [1], and is reported to account for 33% of all preventable drug-related hospital admissions [2].While reasons that lead to non-adherence with prescribed medication are complex, the inability to communicate has been identified as a key aspect preventing patients from taking their medicines appropriately [3]. Improving access to adequate administration information can have an impact on medication adherence [4], preventing medication safety incidents, including medicines-related hospital admissions, and reducing associated costs [2,5,6]. These issues are compounded in those patients living in an English-speaking country who are not native English speakers. It is estimated that over one million people in the U.K. [7,8] and 26 million in the U.S [9] have limited English proficiency. The literature shows that health inequalities and poorer outcomes affect this sector of the population [7,10,11,12]
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