Disclaimer
In an effort to expedite the publication of articles, AJHP is posting manuscripts online as soon as possible after acceptance. Accepted manuscripts have been peer-reviewed and copyedited, but are posted online before technical formatting and author proofing. These manuscripts are not the final version of record and will be replaced with the final article (formatted per AJHP style and proofed by the authors) at a later time.
The lack of appropriate patient/consumer information is often cited as a major cause of medication misuse and drug-related morbidity. This paper reviews recent guidelines for improving written patient information for both prescription and over-the-counter medications. Discussion focuses on three complex issues: providing complete and specific information, providing understandable and usable information, and providing attractive and well-designed materials. Inevitable tradeoffs in meeting these objectives pose a significant challenge to designing more effective patient/consumer materials.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.