A Fact-Finding Survey on Descriptions about “What to Do When Patients Missed a Dose” in “Drug Guides for Patients” and “Kusuri-no-Shiori®”
- VernacularTitle:｢患者向医薬品ガイド」および「くすりのしおり®」における飲み忘れた場合の対応法の記載内容に関する実態調査
- Author:
Yukiko OKAMOTO
1
;
Yasuo NAKAMURA
2
;
Masaharu KUDO
1
Author Information
- Keywords: what to do when patients missed a dose; Drug Guide for Patients; Kusuri-no-Shiori; medication instruction; fact-finding survey
- From:Japanese Journal of Drug Informatics 2021;23(2):82-93
- CountryJapan
- Language:Japanese
- Abstract: Objective: The guidance on “what to do when patients missed a dose” is an important item of medication instructions; however, only a small number of prescription drugs contain it. The “Drug Guide for Patients” and “Kusuri-no-Shiori” are documents designed to facilitate medication instructions for patients, having a section on “what to do when patients missed a dose.” Specific descriptions under it differ among medication instruction documents for some drugs, including those containing the same active pharmaceutical ingredients; however, the actual status of such discrepancies has not been clarified. In this study, we conducted a fact-finding survey to clarify such discrepancies using two medication instruction documents for drugs containing the same active pharmaceutical ingredients.Methods: The medication instructions of “Drug Guides for Patients” and “Kusuri-no-Shiori” for 532 active pharmaceutical ingredients used in oral drugs were included in the survey. After reading the descriptions under the “what to do when patients missed a dose” section, we divided them into six groups and determined whether the descriptions for the same ingredient in the documents fell in the same group.Results: For 186 ingredients (35.0%), we identified discrepancies between the documents. Among these, the instructions for 61 ingredients (11.5%) contained contradicting descriptions, such as “take the missed dose as soon as you remember” in one document and “always let go of the missed dose” in another document.Conclusions: A substantial number of discrepancies in descriptions about “what to do when patients missed a dose” were found between the two documents, raising concerns of confusion in medication instructions when the documents used were different. Therefore, the descriptions should be improved to resolve the discrepancies among medication instruction documents. Moreover, it is important for pharmacists or other healthcare professionals to review the descriptions thoroughly before using the document to provide appropriate medication instructions without confusion.
