Patient Counseling and Education For Pharmacists

Pharmacy as a profession has evolved in recent times. It is more patient centric as it now caters to patients on healthcare provision and counseling. Pharmacists make up the third largest healthcare profession on a global scale. Patient counseling and education helps to limit antibiotic resistance, drug abuse and promote rational drug use.

Medicines are essential to healthcare because they help patients get better. Of all the healthcare professions there are, pharmacists are the most equipped when it concerns medicines and their use. Through counseling and education, pharmacists will be able to decipher and solve drug therapy issues.

Patient counseling and education are often used interchangeably but in actuality, patient education is preventive and foresees potential complications while counseling is corrective and usually takes measures to address these complications. This article explores how pharmacists counsel and educate patients for better outcomes in treatment plan and overall healthcare service delivery.

Patient Counseling and Education

Patient counseling and education (PCE) is defined as providing information on medications and drug treatment plans in an oral or written format which aims to equip patients with knowledge to enhance health and encourage adherence to prescribed treatment plans.

PCE is a tool that pharmacists and other health professionals use to evaluate patients’ comprehension of and ability to adhere to their pharmacotherapeutic regimens. Usually, PCE takes place after prescriptions have been filled, although it can also be done separately.

Patient Counseling may involve individual patients or groups, family members and caregivers. A pharmacist should be attentive to a patient’s views about health and illness, health system, and his or her responsibilities in managing his or her health.

Effective Patient Counseling Education

The chances of a patient complying with a treatment therapy is dependent on PCE. A counseling session is an avenue to share information, as a pharmacist you get to have an overview of what the patient thinks about his or her health and whether they have any issue adhering to the medications.

Conditions needed For Effective Patient Counseling Education

For PCE to be effective, there must be an exchange of information between the pharmacist and the patient. This exchange will be seamless only if there is effective communication.

Effective communication encompasses listening, verbal and non verbal skills.

1. Listening skills go beyond hearing the words of the patient. As a pharmacist you should seek to understand the meaning and purpose behind the spoken words of your patient. This will enable the patient to know that you are interested and urge them to speak more. A good listener reflects on what is being said.
2. Verbal skills like tone, language can make a patient divulge or withhold important information. A soft spoken tone shows interest and empathy while an unpleasant tone reeks of mockery or judgment. While counseling, you need to tailor your speech to suit the patient’s language level and ask open-ended questions that will urge the patient to explain further.
3. Non verbal skills like eye contact, facial expressions, and hand gestures are important. Not making eye contact with a patient could portray lack of interest in the subject matter. These non verbal expressions seem unimportant but most times they determine if the patient will trust you or not.

Other conditions include environment and collaboration with other health stakeholders. The environment should ensure privacy, confidentiality and consideration for patients with special needs. Collaboration with other health professionals will provide the highest level of care. These partnerships will reduce adverse drug reactions and frequent visits to the doctor. When counseling a patient, it is important to use demonstrations and visual aids to drive home the point.

Challenges with Patient Counseling Education

• Inadequate training: pharmacists need to be trained to listen with intent and assess patients based on his or her cognitive ability, sensory and physical status. Some patients may have visual, hearing or motor skills constraints which can make it hard to read labels on prescription containers, listen to oral instructions and open medication containers.
• Inability to address a patient’s needs in a single session: the workload pharmacists experience can limit session time and this can result in certain issues being overlooked. This time constraint can also impact the willingness of the patient to trust the pharmacist to divulge more.
• Shy patients: depending on the medical issue, patients tend to be shy to talk. For instance, a man with erectile dysfunction or a woman with heavy menstrual bleeding may be unwilling to discuss with anyone let alone a professional. In this scenario, the pharmacist has to motivate the patient to trust him or her by being soft spoken, nice and empathetic.

How Important is Patient Counseling Education?

Failure to conduct PCE is preparedness for failure. When patients are educated, they are better informed to make good decisions about their health and lifestyle. It also reduces drug abuse and misuse.

Antimicrobial resistance arising from drug misuse is a threat to human life. Try to picture a world where infections cannot be treated by first line medications. The consequences of antimicrobial resistance are so vast that it is not limited to the health sector but also the financial sector and other facets of human life. Patient satisfaction level will increase and unnecessary costs are avoided when there is adherence to the prescribed treatment therapy and decrease in doctor visits as a result of PCE.

Closing Thoughts

The importance of medicines to health cannot be overstated, effective medication therapy will reduce sickness and death levels which increases reliability in healthcare services. Our vision at Remedial Health entails ensuring health delivery is improved on the African continent. Getting medicines in Africa is challenging as most times they are either counterfeit or expensive. An estimated 100,000 deaths per year in Africa have been linked to counterfeit medicines. Our innovative solutions will equip your pharmacy with genuine and affordable medicines. Our patient medication records platform on Remedial Rx will make patient counseling easier by allowing you and your pharmacy team to access, record and share patient data. For more materials on patient counseling and education, visit the Remedial Health Blog.