Failure to Communicate: Medication Guide or Memory
Title
Failure to Communicate: Medication Guide or Memory
Abstract
Four hundred individuals in the United States
were surveyed via the Internet to determine how
previous experience with a medication guide
(MG) for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory
drugs (NSAIDs) influenced knowledge. Half of
the respondents had received a prescription for
an NSAID in the previous 6 months (during
which time an MG was required). Independently,
half were shown the NSAID MG and allowed
to read or reread it prior to taking a
knowledge test.
Those who read the MG prior to taking the
knowledge test correctly answered about twothirds
of the questions regardless of previous
use. Those who had used the medicine, but did
not review the MG prior to the test, correctly
answered about half of the questions. Those
that neither used the medicine nor reviewed the
MG correctly answered about one-fourth of the
questions. The results indicate that there was
an independent contribution of both experience
using the medicine and MG readership