Impact of patient education with Pictorial aids on medication adherence among patients attending the Diabetic Center, Teaching Hospital Anuradhapura

Abstract

Introduction: Patient education provides medicines-related information to the patients which mainly focus on the ability to understand and follow the advice delivered by health care professionals. WHO states, "increasing the effectiveness of Medication adherence (MA) interventions may have a far greater impact on the health of the population than any improvement in specific medical treatments”. The general practice of dispensing reveals edifying the need for healthcare providers to move beyond the traditional didactic methods of oral and verbal communication with patients regarding medication-taking behavior, especially for chronic patients, diabetics, living with life-long disease states. Objective: To evaluate the impact of patient education with pictorial aids on medication adherence. Methodology: This is an experimental study. Adult diabetic patients (n=156) in the age range between 30 to 60 years were selected from the Diabetic Center by systematic sampling and assigned to Control Group (CG) and Intervention Group (IG). After the pre-adherence was measured in groups, the IG and CG received pictorial aids with verbal education and only verbal education respectively. Post-test were done after one month of intervention. The MA was measured by using Adherence to Refill and Medication Scale (ARMS). Statistics were conducted at 90% power and 95% confidence level. Results: The pre- and post-response rates were 80% and 92% respectively. Except for gender, participants’ characteristics were not significantly different in IG (n=59) and CG (n=56) such as the number of medications (n=4, IQR=2), years on medication (8, SD=6), age (53, IQR=13), and income (Rs.15000.00, IQR=17000.00). Most of the participants were oral hypoglycemic medicine only (66%), and at least attained secondary education (91%). Both educational methods significantly improved the MA in IC and CG. Further MA in IC was significantly higher than CG. Conclusion: Patient Education with pictorial aid is better than verbal education alone.