The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 271 No 7259 p117
26 July 2003

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Letters to the Editor

Patient information

Personalised leaflets are available

From Mr M. P. J. Hadley, MRPharmS

Lorraine Sherr said that information has relevance to patients only if it is personalised (PJ, 12 July, p61).

This was well demonstrated by John Urquhart MD in a paper ("Cost-benefit assessment of patient education") he presented to an open conference on patient information at Bethesda, Maryland, in 1992 (organised by the United States Pharmacopeia).

He gave medicines to four groups of patients in Clic-Loc containers with a microchip to record compliance. One group received counselling, a second received patient information leaflets and a third received neither. He could detect no difference in the level of compliance, which was around 43 per cent. The fourth group received both a leaflet and counselling drawing the patient's attention to some point in the leaflet. The compliance in this group was about 78 per cent.

A number of computer suppliers can now produce patient information leaflets that are personalised. Using these with counselling may achieve a level of concordance in line with these studies.

Mike Hadley
Guernsey, Channel Islands

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