Self-control by patients of the medication list compared to medication verification with pharmacist

Purpose: To investigate the effect of patients receiving the Medication List (ML) in the Electronic Medical Record before a scheduled visit to the physician with a call to control the ML and bring it to the visit compared to medication verification with a trained pharmacy student immediately before the visit.

Methods: Patients with 5 or more prescribed current medications scheduled to visit a physician at 4 Health Care Centres in the Kalmar County were invited to participate, and were assigned to 1) self-control (SC) - to check the ML at home and bring the ML to the physician; or 2) a medication verification (MV) with a pharmacy student immediately before the visit. All patients were interviewed immediately after the visit to the physician.

Results: 148 patients (90 women) with in total 1039 prescriptions in the ML were included - 93 SC-patients and 55 MV-patients. Before the visit, 73 % of patients in both groups had at least 1 discrepancy in the ML, in total 162/1039 discrepancies (15.6 %) in the ML in the SC-group compared with 95/539 (17.6 %) discrepancies in the MV-group. After the visit, 60/93 (65 %) patients in the SC-group had a ML without discrepancies compared with 40/55 (73 %) patients without discrepancies in the MV-group (p=0.086; not significant). The total numbers of discrepancies were 63/975 (6.5%) in the SC-group compared with 26/500 (5.2%) in the MV-group (p=0.30; not significant).

Conclusion: Self-control of the medication list is a mean to empower the patient to participate in the treatment. Our study showed that self-control by patients of the medication list before a scheduled visit to the physician decreases the numbers of discrepancies and give similar outcome to medication verification with trained pharmacy students. There are virtually no costs to implement the results into daily praxis.