Recall of Pharmaceutical Pictograms by Older Adults

Low health literacy and high medication burden in the older adult population are contributing factors to the misunderstanding of medication instructions, leading to an increased risk of poor adherence and adverse events in this group of patients. To evaluate the ability of older adults to recall the meaning of 13 pharmaceutical pictograms 4 weeks after receipt of feedback on pictogram meaning. Older adults (aged 65 or older) were recruited from one community pharmacy in Canada. One-on-one structured interviews were conducted to assess the comprehensibility of 13 pharmaceutical pictograms from the International Pharmaceutical Federation's database of pictograms. Each participant was then told the meaning of each pictogram. Recall was assessed 4 weeks later. A total of 58 participants met the inclusion criteria and agreed to participate. The number of pictograms meeting the ISO threshold for comprehensibility of symbols increased from 10 at the initial comprehensibility assessment to 13 at the recall assessment. Analysis of demographic data showed no associations between initial comprehensibility of the pictograms and age, sex, education level, or number of medications taken. The results of this study indicate that after being informed of the meaning of pharmaceutical pictograms, older adults were able to recall the pictogram meanings for at least 4 weeks.