With the use of a PDF-searching app, icons and colour-coding, we found one could counsel on an unfamiliar medication within seconds of glancing at this document. We also found we were able to more easily remember key counselling pearls later when this came up again.

 

In contrast, other resources require reading wordy paragraphs, skimming past irrelevant and redundant information like cost, dosage forms, and strengths, or interpreting large tables. There was clearly a disconnect between what we know is already available to pharmacists through their pharmacy management system (Kroll, etc) and what points should be mentioned to patients.

 

This also made us realize prescribers could benefit from this as well: sometimes patients don’t have good rapport with their pharmacist or rarely get more than a minute of time with them, and thus don’t always receive quality medication counselling.