Impact of a Community Pharmacist on Patient Knowledge of NPMs

Background: Nonprescription medications (NPMs) account for more than 100,000 products for approximately 450 ailments. It has been estimated that 59% of the American population self-medicates with NPMs. A recent survey found that patients are deficient in reading drug labels and identifying active ingredients and that they are exceeding the recommended daily dose of NPMs. Objective: To evaluate the impact of one-on-one pharmacist counseling sessions on patients' knowledge of NPMs, looking at specific patient populations. Methods: We conducted a randomized prospective intervention trial. Patients over the age of 18 years taking blood pressure and/or diabetes medications were randomized into control and intervention groups. All patients received baseline preintervention surveys. Patients in the intervention group completed a postintervention survey after a 20-minute NPM counseling session, while patients in the control group completed the postintervention survey without completing a counseling session. t-Test and descriptive analyses were used to evaluate results from the presurvey and postintervention survey to evaluate the impact of a community pharmacist, delineate NPM use in the past 6 months, and reflect the opinions and attitudes toward use and safety of NPMs. Results: Patient NPM knowledge improved after a counseling session with a community pharmacist. Drug facts label knowledge scores improved (4.8 vs 5.4; p = 0.02) and basic drug knowledge scores improved (3.9 vs 6.3; p = 0.02) compared with baseline analysis in the intervention group. Patients in the intervention group scored significantly higher compared with the control group on the overall knowledge postintervention survey (11.8 vs 9; p = 0.01). Conclusions: Pharmacists can significantly impact the NPM knowledge of patients by dedicating a short amount of scheduled time to educating patients about appropriate use of medications.