The purpose of this study was to examine patient preferences for receiving antidepressant information. Previous research by the FDA has found that patients often receive inadequate verbal information about medications from physicians and pharmacists. Therefore, the Department of Health and Human Services has been working with drug manufacturers, pharmacists, and others on a voluntary written medication information program. Their goal is that by the year 2005, 95 percent of patients will receive written drug information when picking up prescriptions from their pharmacies. In this study, eighty-three patients who were on antidepressant medications were interviewed in eight different community pharmacies. When asked how they would prefer to receive information about antidepressants, 43% of patients preferred both written and verbal, 21% preferred just verbal, and 36% preferred just written information. Multivariate analysis revealed that lower educated patients were significantly more likely than more educated patients to want to receive just verbal information about antidepressants. When asked to rank how they would verbally like to receive antidepressant information, the majority of patients ranked receiving information from physicians as first choice, receiving information from pharmacists as second choice, and receiving information from video-tapes or audio-tapes as third choice. Therefore the results of this study indicate that the FDA needs to make sure that mechanisms are in place to make sure that less educated patients, who may have difficulty reading, receive adequate drug information.
Learning Objectives: 1. Describe the percent of patients who prefer to receive written versus verbal information about antidepressant medications. 2. Explain what patient characteristics influence whether patients want to receive drug information in a written or verbal format.
Keywords: Communication, Mental Health
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