Are patients who self‐administer their medicines in hospital more satisfied with their care?

Abstract

Are patients who self-administer their medicines in hospital more satis®ed with their care? Patient self-administration of medicines in hospital prior to discharge is being seen increasingly as good practice by health professionals. Previous studies have looked for increased compliance and knowledge or asked whether patients liked self-administration and have not clearly demonstrated the bene®ts. This study surveys patients' views on self-administration and on their care. In particular it looks at the discharge process and the way information was given to the patient on discharge. Questionnaires were distributed to 309 patients being discharged from general medical wards of a teaching hospital in Central England to be completed by the patients after their discharge from hospital. Of these, 202 were returned to a separate university department for analysis. Although this study has been undertaken on only two wards, the survey has potential for large scale use. Findings which were consistent with previous work were that a great majority of patients who had self-administered their medicines would like to again, whilst those who had not had that opportunity were less likely to choose to self-administer in the future. However, this study found that a majority of patients under 60-years-old would choose to selfadminister their medicines in hospital even if they had not been given the opportunity to do so recently. It was also found that patients who had administered their own medicines in hospital were more likely to report their overall care as excellent and were more satis®ed with the discharge process than patients who had not.

Hospital inpatient self-administration of medicine programmes: a critical literature review

“…Ptashnick [53] Satisfaction 87% patients who self-administered felt they had benefited from the programme Sutherland [54] Satisfaction Most patients who self-administered were satisfied with the programme Deeks [55] Satisfaction SAG reported significantly better overall impression of care, and scored higher on feelings on discharge, with significantly higher mean discharge satisfaction indices versus controls. No difference between mean satisfaction indices for the provision of information about medicines for each group.…”

“…Details of questions were not provided in seven of the seventeen papers [23,29,37,48,49,50,53]. Five studies were postal surveys [40,45,47,51,55]. Those using multiple choice or yes/no/ indifferent answers had higher response rates [40,47] than those using open or mixed questions [51,55].…”

“…Five studies were postal surveys [40,45,47,51,55]. Those using multiple choice or yes/no/ indifferent answers had higher response rates [40,47] than those using open or mixed questions [51,55]. High numbers of patients who had experienced SAPs responded in favour of self-administration compared to nurse-administration: 76-100% [23,39,40,46,49,50].…”

“…All used a questionnaire or structured interview; one was an informal survey [48]. One study [46] used a mixture of multiple choice and open questions, four used questions requiring yes/no/indifferent answers [40,45,47,52], three used Likert rating scales [25,52,54], two, [39,51] used open questions and Deeks and Byatt [55] used a variety of questioning methods. Details of questions were not provided in seven of the seventeen papers [23,29,37,48,49,50,53].…”

“…Seventeen papers [23,25,29,37,39,40,[45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55] were selected for review that had undertaken some measure of patient satisfaction. Five were controlled studies [25,37,39,45,55]. All used a questionnaire or structured interview; one was an informal survey [48].…”