Attitude of the public toward technical package inserts for medication information in Belgium

We designed an 84-item questionnaire to determine the attitude of the Belgian public toward package inserts (PI) for medication information, written in technical language and intended for health professionals, within an original drug-dispensing distribution system. There were 398 respondents to this general public survey, based on a 0.05 percent selection from election registers of the districts of Gent and Liège. Eighty-nine percent of the respondents read the PI, focusing their attention principally on adverse effects (88 percent), dosage and dosing guidelines (85 percent), contraindications (82 percent), indications (79 percent), and medication shelf-life (76 percent). Compliance (83 percent), reassurance (57 percent), increased knowledge about the medication (50 percent), and decision to take the medicine (31 percent) were among the respondents' motives for reading the PI. Most respondents considered the PI information useful and complete, but difficult to remember and understand. Readers further criticized its legibility and poor graphic illustration. The PI was seen as a supplementary source of information, instrumental to the physician-pharmacist-patient relationship, without the power to overrule the physician's or pharmacist's instructions. Some respondents reported that the PI made them afraid to use the medication. Expectations for the ideal PI were contradictory and can only be met with a never-optimal compromise between comprehensiveness and conciseness.