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British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology logoLink to British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology
. 1984 Jun;17(6):769–772. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2125.1984.tb02417.x

Clinical evaluation of two strategies for improving patient recall of prior drug therapy.

N Bellamy, E Grace, B Hanna, E Grant, P Tugwell, W W Buchanan
PMCID: PMC1463437  PMID: 6743470

Abstract

The ability to recall details of current and prior drug therapy was evaluated in two studies employing a total of 94 patients with inflammatory polyarthritis. Ten per cent of patients were unable to completely recall the names of their current anti-inflammatory drugs and eighty-three per cent of patients to completely recall the details of prior anti-inflammatory drug therapy. Prompting firstly with the proprietary names of drugs and thereafter with a pill board substantially enhanced recall particularly for prior NSAID therapy. Nineteen per cent of responses obtained with verbal prompting were inaccurate. No such problems were encountered in responses obtained using the pill board. These findings indicate that a complete and accurate drug history can only be obtained in the majority of patients using recall enhancement strategies.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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