U.S. researchers welcome new approach to medication counseling

Researchers at Oregon State University (OSU) have recently found that a new type of medication counseling can increase the safety of patients in the United States who use prescription drugs.

The new approach features interactive counseling, which allows patients to discuss about the drugs they are prescribed and clarify whatever they don't understand.

On the contrary, the conventional approach named "lecture format," often referred to as reading off the label, is a one-way form of communication that merely provides patients with information about their prescriptions, giving little assurance that patients understand important details about their drugs.

The new study by OSU, published in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association, has proven that the interactive approach can more than double the chance that patients properly take, understand and manage their use of prescription drugs.

With this approach, patients are asked three basic, open-ended questions, including the name and effect of the medication; how to use and store it, and what possible side effects it might have and how to deal with them.

The study, which surveyed 500 participants at four community pharmacies in Oregon, showed that 71 percent of patients using the new counseling approach could answer all three questions correctly, compared to the 33 percent of patients who were instructed with the conventional approach.

Besides, the average time it took pharmacists to use the new counseling approach was a little over two minutes, compared to the 75 seconds when they used the old method.

Although most people using either way understood what the medication they were taking was for, four times as many people using the new approach were clear about how and when to take their drugs and also knew the adverse effects of their prescriptions.

The alternative counseling approach was co-developed by Robert Boyce, director of pharmacy services in the Student Health Center Pharmacy at OSU in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.

This approach, first introduced in 1991, is now gaining much wider acceptance across the United States.

Boyce said OSU's study was "the first real analysis" to prove that interactive counseling works, saying it could be "extremely important for health care in America." Endi