title: Medicine labels incorporating pictograms: do they influence understanding and adherence?
abstract: The objective was to determine the influence of medicine labels incorporating pictograms on the understanding of instructions and on adherence. Eighty-seven Xhosa participants attending an outpatient clinic who had been prescribed a short course of antibiotics were randomly allocated to either a control group (41 participants given text-only labels), or an experimental group (46 participants given text + pictogram labels). All participants had a maximum of 10 years of formal schooling. Follow-up home visits were conducted after 3-5 days to assess understanding of instructions and to evaluate adherence. A high adherence of greater than 90% was found for 54% of the experimental group, compared with only 2% of the control group. Average percentages for understanding in the control and experimental groups were 70 and 95%, respectively, and average adherence was 72 and 90%, respectively. The presence of pictograms was found to contribute positively to both understanding of instructions and adherence.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Pharmacy, Rhodes University, Grahamstown 6140, South Africa. r.dowse@ru.ac.za
authors.forename: Ros
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Dowse
authors.forename: Martina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ehlers
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003142:Communication; D032882:Comprehension; D004348:Drug Labeling / Q000379:methods*; D011307:Drug Prescriptions; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010349:Patient Compliance; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D012424:Rural Population; D012646:Self Administration / Q000523:psychology*; D013019:South Africa; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013664:Teaching Materials