Patients’ ability to read and understand dosing instructions of their own medicines – a cross sectional study in a hospital and community pharmacy setting

Table 4 Percentages of medicines that had complete, readable and comprehensible dosing instructions

Type of instructions	% of medicines
	Completeness^a		Readability^b		Comprehensibility^c
	HPS	CPS	HPS	CPS	HPS	CPS
Name	72.2	94.7	48.3	27.3	40.2	25.8
Dosage form	63.6	96.4	92.9	97.1	98.0	95.9
Strength	81.7	89.8	40.2	36.7	29.9	23.9
Number of units dispensed	99.7	99.8	99.1	98.1	99.0	97.4
Frequency	98.9	99.7	98.8	97.4	98.9	96.6
Duration	0.3	0.7	66.7	88.9	37.2	95.5
Route of administration	0.6	0.8	85.7	81.8	99.5	99.7
Relationship with meals (for applicable medicines)	97.5	99.6	91.9	94.9	88.2	91.4
Special instructions (for applicable medicines)	50.8	54.0	96.8	100.0	68.8	48.0

The number of medicines was used as the denominator ^a, ^b, ^c but varied by medicine type and level of completeness of dosing instructions
^anumber of medicines where the relevant dosing instruction was considered to be essential
^bnumber of medicines where the relevant dosing instruction was written by the pharmacist
^cnumber of medicines where relevant dosing instruction was considered to be essential

ISSN: 1472-6963