Recognizing pharmaceutical illiteracy in community pharmacy: Agreement between a practice-based interview guide and...

Area of Science:

• Pharmacy Practice
• Health Literacy Research
• Patient Safety

Background:

• Limited pharmaceutical literacy increases drug-related problems.
• Identifying patients with low pharmaceutical literacy in practice is challenging.
• The Recognition and Addressing of Limited Pharmaceutical Literacy (RALPH) interview guide was developed for practical use in pharmacies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the agreement between the RALPH guide and a validated general health literacy questionnaire.
• To gain insight into patients' pharmaceutical literacy using the RALPH interview guide.

Main Methods:

• Structured face-to-face interviews with 508 patients at community pharmacies.
• Utilized the RALPH guide and the Functional Communicative Critical Health Literacy (FCCHL) questionnaire.
• Measured functional, communicative, and critical health literacy skills and calculated agreement.

Main Results:

• Patients with limited pharmaceutical literacy (RALPH) also had lower general health literacy (FCCHL).
• Moderate agreement (∼60%) was found between the RALPH guide and FCCHL across three domains.
• While most patients understood basic medication timing, 25% struggled with warnings/precautions; information seeking and assessment were also difficult.

Conclusions:

• Patients face challenges with complex medication information, like interpreting warnings and analyzing drug data.
• The RALPH guide offers context-specific insights into medication use skills, complementing general health literacy assessments.
• Tailored pharmaceutical care requires context-specific assessment of patient skills, making the RALPH guide valuable for community pharmacy practice.