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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).
Female43.3%
Male 56.7% 20-
9.9%
30-18.3%
Less than 10 years
4.5%
10-19.5%
40-17.9%
50-15.4%
60+14.5%
Skilled worker8.6%
Clerk24.2%
Housewife13.3%
Non-skilled worker11.9%
Professional9.8%
Student24.0%
Retired8.1%
Recurrent82.7%
New17.3%
The mean patient knowledge score was 2.49.
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.