The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 276 No 7392 p310
18 March 2006

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Information may be as crucial as therapy

Information about self care could prove to be as important to patient outcomes as medical tests, drugs and other treatments, the founder of the US Prescribing Information to Patients programme argued at a Patient Information Forum conference in Manchester last month.

Don Kemper advocated the use of information prescriptions — similar to those described in the “Our health, our care, our say” White Paper — to provide patients with personalised self-management plans, decision guides and lists of local resources, to help them make better decisions about their health.

Pharmacists need to ask what additional skills and continuing professional development they need to be able to give appropriate non-medicine advice about healthy living issues, Mark Duman, a pharmacist and chairman of the Patient Information Forum, told The Journal. And they also need to think about how they can incorporate such information into the consultation process, he said.