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Patient information leaflets: informing or frightening? A focus group study exploring patients’ emotional reactions and subsequent behavior towards package leaflets of commonly prescribed medications in family practices
BACKGROUND: The purpose of patient information leaflets (PILs) is to inform patients about the administration, precautions and potential side effects of their prescribed medication. Despite European Commission guidelines aiming at increasing readability and comprehension of PILs little is known abou...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4287479/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25277783 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2296-15-163 |
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author | Herber, Oliver Rudolf Gies, Verena Schwappach, David Thürmann, Petra Wilm, Stefan |
author_facet | Herber, Oliver Rudolf Gies, Verena Schwappach, David Thürmann, Petra Wilm, Stefan |
author_sort | Herber, Oliver Rudolf |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The purpose of patient information leaflets (PILs) is to inform patients about the administration, precautions and potential side effects of their prescribed medication. Despite European Commission guidelines aiming at increasing readability and comprehension of PILs little is known about the potential risk information has on patients. This article explores patients’ reactions and subsequent behavior towards risk information conveyed in PILs of commonly prescribed drugs by general practitioners (GPs) for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes, hypertension or hypercholesterolemia; the most frequent cause for consultations in family practices in Germany. METHODS: We conducted six focus groups comprising 35 patients which were recruited in GP practices. Transcripts were read and coded for themes; categories were created by abstracting data and further refined into a coding framework. RESULTS: Three interrelated categories are presented: (i) The vast amount of side effects and drug interactions commonly described in PILs provoke various emotional reactions in patients which (ii) lead to specific patient behavior of which (iii) consulting the GP for assistance is among the most common. Findings show that current description of potential risk information caused feelings of fear and anxiety in the reader resulting in undesirable behavioral reactions. CONCLUSIONS: Future PILs need to convey potential risk information in a language that is less frightening while retaining the information content required to make informed decisions about the prescribed medication. Thus, during the production process greater emphasis needs to be placed on testing the degree of emotional arousal provoked in patients when reading risk information to allow them to undertake a benefit-risk-assessment of their medication that is based on rational rather than emotional (fearful) reactions. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4287479 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42874792015-01-09 Patient information leaflets: informing or frightening? A focus group study exploring patients’ emotional reactions and subsequent behavior towards package leaflets of commonly prescribed medications in family practices Herber, Oliver Rudolf Gies, Verena Schwappach, David Thürmann, Petra Wilm, Stefan BMC Fam Pract Research Article BACKGROUND: The purpose of patient information leaflets (PILs) is to inform patients about the administration, precautions and potential side effects of their prescribed medication. Despite European Commission guidelines aiming at increasing readability and comprehension of PILs little is known about the potential risk information has on patients. This article explores patients’ reactions and subsequent behavior towards risk information conveyed in PILs of commonly prescribed drugs by general practitioners (GPs) for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes, hypertension or hypercholesterolemia; the most frequent cause for consultations in family practices in Germany. METHODS: We conducted six focus groups comprising 35 patients which were recruited in GP practices. Transcripts were read and coded for themes; categories were created by abstracting data and further refined into a coding framework. RESULTS: Three interrelated categories are presented: (i) The vast amount of side effects and drug interactions commonly described in PILs provoke various emotional reactions in patients which (ii) lead to specific patient behavior of which (iii) consulting the GP for assistance is among the most common. Findings show that current description of potential risk information caused feelings of fear and anxiety in the reader resulting in undesirable behavioral reactions. CONCLUSIONS: Future PILs need to convey potential risk information in a language that is less frightening while retaining the information content required to make informed decisions about the prescribed medication. Thus, during the production process greater emphasis needs to be placed on testing the degree of emotional arousal provoked in patients when reading risk information to allow them to undertake a benefit-risk-assessment of their medication that is based on rational rather than emotional (fearful) reactions. BioMed Central 2014-10-02 /pmc/articles/PMC4287479/ /pubmed/25277783 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2296-15-163 Text en © Herber et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014 This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Herber, Oliver Rudolf Gies, Verena Schwappach, David Thürmann, Petra Wilm, Stefan Patient information leaflets: informing or frightening? A focus group study exploring patients’ emotional reactions and subsequent behavior towards package leaflets of commonly prescribed medications in family practices |
title | Patient information leaflets: informing or frightening? A focus group study exploring patients’ emotional reactions and subsequent behavior towards package leaflets of commonly prescribed medications in family practices |
title_full | Patient information leaflets: informing or frightening? A focus group study exploring patients’ emotional reactions and subsequent behavior towards package leaflets of commonly prescribed medications in family practices |
title_fullStr | Patient information leaflets: informing or frightening? A focus group study exploring patients’ emotional reactions and subsequent behavior towards package leaflets of commonly prescribed medications in family practices |
title_full_unstemmed | Patient information leaflets: informing or frightening? A focus group study exploring patients’ emotional reactions and subsequent behavior towards package leaflets of commonly prescribed medications in family practices |
title_short | Patient information leaflets: informing or frightening? A focus group study exploring patients’ emotional reactions and subsequent behavior towards package leaflets of commonly prescribed medications in family practices |
title_sort | patient information leaflets: informing or frightening? a focus group study exploring patients’ emotional reactions and subsequent behavior towards package leaflets of commonly prescribed medications in family practices |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4287479/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25277783 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2296-15-163 |
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