In addition, the study design did not allow evaluation of client compliance with oral dosing instructions; inconsistent or under-dosing is reportedly not uncommon in companion animal practice [ 36, 37].
"Dosing instructions could be made clearer, especially for patients and caregivers with limited literacy or numeracy," he said, referring to the ability to understand numbers.
Patients also need to keep track of dosing instructions and manage insurance claims for each medicine; the more prescriptions they have, the more complexity they face.
However, package information per se was found to be easily understandable, although dosing instructions for calculating the right amount of detergent for the laundry were often confusing.
To identify and compare volumetric measures used by healthcare providers in communicating dosing instructions for pediatric liquid prescriptions to parents/caregivers.
More precisely, the purpose of the study was designed to analyse how the detergent package information and dosing instructions are read, understood and followed in the Finnish households.
The researchers presented each patient with seven typical amber pill bottles with dosing instructions on the labels and a slotted tray marked with times of day.
And in another study among 100 people who were told a child's weight and given dosing instructions by weight, only two in five were able to determine the correct dose and only two-thirds were able to measure the dose correctly.
The need for more simplified dosing instructions has been demonstrated in several such studies, but change has been slow to come, partly because pharmacists in each state are regulated by a different board of pharmacy.
Shorter trials with less complicated dosing instructions could help, for example.
To avoid the complexity introduced by what happens in routine clinical practice, we simply modelled the dosing instructions given in the products' package inserts or the Sm PC.
