Pharmacists' New Tools to Help Serve Patients

The US Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has developed two new guides to help pharmacists determine if patients need extra help in having adequate knowledge about managing their medications. The guides were the result of a study that showed that many patients lack basic knowledge when it comes to taking medication.

The AHRQ's study published last year entitled the 2006 National Healthcare Disparities Report showed that those patients with limited health literacy were at a disadvantage that could result in poorer health. A 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy reported that 14 percent of adults, or 30 million people, do not have even the basic level of health literacy. The AHRQ study concluded that some groups, including minorities and the poor, are more prone to poorer health and that may be in part due to limitations in understanding medications.

The AHRQ cites studies that have discovered that those patients that lack basic understanding of medication instructions are more likely to misinterpret warning labels, not comprehend the dangers of drug interactions, and have difficulty distinguishing one medication from another.

Director Carolyn M. Clancy said in the AHRQ's press release announcing the new pharmacy tools, "Ensuring that people with limited health literacy understand how to take their medications safely is key to improving the quality of health care and reducing medical errors. Pharmacists play an important role in this effort, and these new tools will help them help their patients."

The first guide or "tool" that the AHRQ has developed in response to the 2006 study is called Is Our Pharmacy Meeting Patients' Needs? A Pharmacy Health Literacy Assessment Tool User's Guide. This guide requires non-conspicuous auditors to observe pharmacy staff during busy times and slow times to see how they interact with patients. From those observations, more specific plans can be developed to train the staff in better assessing the needs of patients. Patient focus groups are also part of this tool.

The second tool is called Strategies to Improve Communications Between Pharmacy Staff and Patients: Training Guide for Pharmacy Staff. This tool's purpose is to introduce staffs to the issue of limited literacy and ways to increase and improve communication between the pharmacy staff and their patients.

Both tools have been geared to not only increase awareness among pharmacy staffers as to the needs of some patients, but also to help overcome those limitations on the part of patients that can hamper even the best medical care. The National Assessment of Adult Literacy has reported that only 12 percent of American adults have what is considered to be proficient literacy in health. That is roughly one in ten adults that have above average knowledge and understanding of health-related issues.

Sources: US Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Health Research and Quality, National Assessment of Adult Literacy