Investigating the effectiveness of a patient-centred dispensing label on comprehension of medication dosing instructions

The typical way of presenting information on labels of dispensed medicines can confuse some people. This randomised control trial aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of dispensing labels designed to be easier to read, these labels are called "patient-centred labels". The label was designed following international evidence and recommendations provided by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care that are yet to be implemented in Australian pharmacy practice. Compared with the standard dispensing label (70x30mm), the patient-centred label was double spaced (70x60mm) and contained more explicit instructions that were written in simple language using 12 point font size. A universal medication schedule was used to convey and simplify instructions for dosing for example ‘take 2 tablets in the morning, and take 2 tablets in the evening’ rather than ‘take TWO tablets TWICE a day’. Numbers rather than words were used to convey numeric information, for example ‘take 2 tablets...’ rather than ‘take TWO tablets...’. The trial was carried out using a structured interview approach with participants recruited from the waiting area of a tertiary-care hospital's pharmacy department. The intervention was administered face to face by a pharmacist researcher once-off during a 30 min interview. Participants were asked questions relating to how well they access and interpret health information and then randomly assigned to either a set of three standard dispensing labels or three patient-centred dispensing labels. They were asked to interpret their assigned dispensing labels and comprehend how they would take their medication. Participants were provided with inactive tablets or liquid and asked to demonstrate how they would take each medicine over a week on an A3 size grid sheet.