OBJECTIVE Improved drug labelling for chronic pill-form medications has been shown to promote patient comprehension, adherence and safety. We extended health literacy principles and included patients' perspectives to improve instructions for: (1) non-pill form, (2) short term, (3) 'as needed,' (4) tapered and (5) escalating dose medications. SETTING Participants were recruited via convenience...

Results: Correct understanding of the 5 labels ranged from 67.1% to 91.1%. Patients reading at or below the sixth-grade level (low literacy) were less able to understand all 5 label instructions. Although 70.7% of patients with low literacy correctly stated the instructions, “Take two tablets by mouth twice daily,” only 34.7% could demonstrate the number of pills to be taken daily. After potent...

BACKGROUND Health literacy has increasingly been viewed as a patient safety issue and may contribute to medication errors. OBJECTIVE To examine patients' abilities to understand and demonstrate instructions found on container labels of common prescription medications. DESIGN Cross-sectional study using in-person, structured interviews. SETTING 3 primary care clinics serving mostly indigen...

BACKGROUND Health literacy impacts health outcomes. Health literacy is a measure of a person's competence to find, access, contextualize, and understand the information needed to make health decisions. Low levels of health literacy have been associated with poor health status. Health literacy can be enhanced by improving the readability of health literature. Misuse and abuse of prescription med...

BACKGROUND Despite the impact of medication literacy (ML) on patients' safe use of medications, existing instruments are mostly for general health literacy measurement or designed for specific disease populations, with few specifically designed for ML. OBJECTIVE To develop and validate the first Chinese medication literacy measure (ChMLM). METHODS The ChMLM was developed by a multidisciplin...

Background A considerable group of internet users consists of university users; however, despite internet benefits and capabilities, internet overuse is a threat to societies especially to young people and students. Objective The objective of this study was to determine the predictive role of information literacy in internet addiction among students of Iran University of Medical Sciences duri...

OBJECTIVE Patients with low health literacy have difficulty understanding prescription drug labels and other medication instructions. This article describes the development, implementation, and preliminary evaluation of an illustrated medication schedule (a "pill card") that depicts a patient's daily medication regimen using pill images and icons. METHODS Participants in a randomized controll...